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3  1822  00786  6676     ^ : 

DISENCHANTMENT 


C.  E.  MONTAGUE 


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DISENCHANTMENT 


BY    THE   SAME   AUTHOR 

A  HIND  LET  LOOSE 
THE  MORNING'S  WAR 
DRAMATIC    VALUES 


DISENCHANTMENT 

By    C.    E.    MONTAGUE 


NEW    YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

PUBLISHERS 


Published,  1922,  by 
BRENTANO'S 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


To 
AUBREY     MONTAGUE 
OF       LAUTOKA,        FIJI 

"We  twa  hae  paidlet  i'  the  burn" 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Vision  i 

II.  Misgiving  i6 

III.  At  Agincourt  and  Ypres  35 

IV.  Tedium  62 
V.  The  Sheep  that  were  not  Fed  84 

VI.  'Ware  Politicians  103 

VII.  "Can't  Believe  a  Word"  114 

VIII.  The  Duty  of  Lying  127 

IX.  Autumn  Comes  I57 

X.  Autumn  Tints  in  Chivalry  I73 

XI.  Stars  in  their  Courses  189 

XII.  Belated  Boons  205 

XIII.  The  Old  Age  of  the  War  219 

XIV.  Our  Moderate  Satanists  232 
XV.  Any  Cure?  252 

XVI.  Fair  warning  266 


DISENCHANTMENT 

CHAPTER    I 

THE    VISION 

I 

Now  that  most  of  our  men  in  the  prime 
of  Hfe  have  been  in  the  army  we  seem 
to  be  in  for  a  goodly  Hterature  of  disap- 
pointment. All  the  ungifted  young  people  came 
back  from  the  war  to  tell  us  that  they  were  "  fed 
up."  That  was  their  ailment,  in  outline.  The 
gifted  ones  are  now  coming  down  to  detail.  They 
say  that  a  web  has  been  woven  over  the  sky,  or 
that  something  or  other  has  made  a  goblin  of  the 
sun — about  as  full  details  of  a  pain  as  you  can 
fairly  expect  a  gifted  person  to  give,  although  he 
really  may  feel  it. 

No  doubt  disenchantment  has  flourished  before. 
About  the  year  1880  nearly  all  the  best  art  was 
wan  and  querulous;  that  of  Burne-Jones  was  al- 
ways in  trouble;  Matthew  Arnold's  verse  was  a 
well-bred,  melodious  whine;  Rossetti  was  all  dis- 
enamourment  and  displacement.     Yet  you  could 

I 


DISENCHANTMENT 

feel  that  their  broken-toy  view  of  the  world  was 
only  their  nice  little  way  with  the  public.  Burne* 
Jones  in  his  home  was  a  red,  jovial  man;  Arnold 
a  diner-out  of  the  first  lustre;  Rossetti  a  sworn 
friend  to  bacon  and  eggs  and  other  plain  pleasures. 
The  young  melancholiasts  of  to-day  are  less  good 
at  their  craft,  and  yet  they  do  give  you  a  notion 
that  some  sort  of  silver  cord  really  seems  to  them 
to  have  come  loose  in  their  insides,  or  some  golden 
bowl,  which  mattered  to  them,  to  have  been  more 
or  less  broken,  and  that  they  are  feeling  honestly 
sour  about  it.  If  they  do  not  know  how  to  take  it 
out  of  mankind  by  writing  desolatory  verses  about 
ashes  and  dust  in  the  English  Review,  at  least 
they  can,  if  they  be  workmen,  vote  for  a  strike: 
they  thus  achieve  the  same  good  end  and  put  it 
beyond  any  doubt  that  they  don't  think  all  is  well 
with  the  world. 

II 

The  higher  the  wall  or  the  horse  from  which 
you  have  tumbled,  the  larger,  under  Nature's  iron 
law,  are  your  bruises  and  consequent  crossness 
likely  to  be.  Before  we  try  shaking  or  cuffing  the 
disenraptured  young  Solomons  in  our  magazines 
and  our  pits  it  would  be  humane  to  reflect  that 
some  five  millions  of  these,  in  their  turns,  have 

2 


THE    VISION 

fallen  off  an  extremely  high  horse.  Of  course,  we 
have  all  fallen  off  something  since  19 14.  Even 
owners  of  ships  and  vendors  of  heavy  woollens 
might,  if  all  hearts  were  laid  bare,  be  found  to 
have  fallen,  not  perhaps  off  a  high  horse,  but  at 
least  off  some  minute  metaphysical  pony.  Still, 
the  record  in  length  of  vertical  fall,  and  of  pro- 
portionate severity  of  incidence  upon  an  inelastic 
earth,  is  probably  held  by  ex-soldiers  and,  among 
these,  by  the  volunteers  of  the  first  year  of  the 
war.  We  were  all,  of  course,  volunteers  then,  un- 
diluted by  indispensable  Harry's  later  success  in 
getting  dispensable  Johnnie  forced  to  join  us  in 
the  Low  Countries. 

Most  of  those  volunteers  of  the  prime  were  men 
of  handsome  and  boundless  illusions.  Each  of 
them  quite  seriously  thought  of  himself  as  a  mole- 
cule in  the  body  of  a  nation  that  was  really,  and 
not  just  figuratively,  "  straining  every  nerve  "  to 
discharge  an  obligation  of  honour.  Honestly, 
there  was  about  them  as  little  as  there  could  hu- 
manly be  of  the  coxcombry  of  self-devotion.  They 
only  felt  that  they  had  got  themselves  happily 
placed  on  a  rope  at  which  everyone  else,  in  some 
way  or  other,  was  tugging  his  best  as  well  as  they. 
All  the  air  was  ringing  with  rousing  assurances. 
France  to  be  saved,  Belgium  righted,  freedom  and 

3 


DISENCHANTMENT 

civilization  re-won,  a  sour,  soiled,  crooked  old 
world  to  be  rid  of  bullies  and  crooks  and  reclaimed 
for  straiglitness,  decency,  good-nature,  the  ways 
of  common  men  dealing  with  common  men.  What 
a  chance !  The  plain  recruit  who  had  not  the 
gift  of  a  style  said  to  himself  that  for  once  he 
had  got  right  in  on  the  ground-floor  of  a  topping 
good  thing,  and  he  blessed  the  luck  that  had 
made  him  neither  too  old  nor  too  young.  Rupert 
Brooke,  meaning  exactly  the  same  thing,  was 
writing: 

Now,  God  be  thank'd  who  has  match'd  us  with  His  hour, 
And  caught  our  youth  and  waken'd  us  from  sleeping, 
With  hand  made  sure,  clear  eye,  and  sharpen'd  power, 
To  turn,  as  swimmers  into  cleanness  leaping. 
Glad  from  a  world  grown  old  and  cold  and  weary.  .  .  . 

Of  course,  it  is  easy  to  say  to  any  such  simple- 
ton now:  "  Well,  if  you  were  like  that,  what  could 
you  expect?  Voits  I'avez  voulii,  George  Dandin. 
You  were  rushing  upon  disillusionment."  Of 
course  he  was.  If  each  recruit  in  19 14  had  been 
an  a  Kempis,  or  even  a  Rochefoucauld,  he  would 
have  known  that  if  you  are  to  love  mankind  you 
must  not  expect  too  much  from  it.  But  he  was 
not,  as  a  rule,  a  philosopher.  He  was  a  common 
man,  not  much  inclined  to  think  evil  of  people.  It 
no  more  occurred  to  him  at  that  time  that  he  was 

4 


THE    VISION 

the  natural  prey  of  seventy-seven  separate  breeds 
of  profiteers  than  it  did  that  presently  he  would 
be  overrun  by  less  figurative  lice.  When  Gari- 
baldi led  an  infantry  attack  against  the  Austrians 
it  was  said  that  he  never  looked  round  to  see  if 
his  men  were  following;  he  knew  to  a  dead  cer- 
tainty that  at  the  moment  when  he  reached  the 
enemy  he  would  feel  his  men's  breath  hot  on  the 
back  of  his  neck.  The  early  volunteer  in  his  blind- 
ness imagined  that  there  was  between  all  English- 
men then  that  oneness  of  faith,  love,  and  courage. 

Ill 

Everything  helped,  for  a  time,  to  keep  him  the 
child  that  he  was.  Except  in  the  matter  of  sep- 
aration from  civilian  friends  his  daily  life  was 
pretty  well  that  of  the  happiest  children.  The 
men  knew  nothing  and  hoped  for  wonderful 
things.  Drill,  to  the  average  recruit,  was  like  some 
curious  game  or  new  dance,  various  and  rhythmic, 
and  not  very  hard:  it  was  rather  fun  for  adults 
to  be  able  to  play  at  such  things  without  being 
laughed  at.  Their  lives  had  undergone  an  im- 
mense simplification.  Of  course,  an  immense  sim- 
plification of  life  is  not  certain  to  be  a  wholly 
good  thing.  A  Zulu's  life  may  be  simpler  than 
Einstein's  and  yet  the  estate  of  Einstein  may  be 

5 


DISENCHANTMENT 

the  more  gracious.  If  a  boatload  of  men  holding 
the  Order  of  Merit  were  cast  away  on  a  desert 
island  they  might,  on  the  whole,  think  the  life  as 
beastly  as  Touchstone  found  the  life  in  the  Forest 
of  Arden.  Yet  some  of  those  eminent  men  might 
find  a  soul  of  good  in  that  evil.  They  might 
grill  all  the  day  and  shiver  all  night,  and  be  half- 
starved  the  whole  of  the  time.  But  their  minds 
would  get  a  rest  cure.  While  they  were  there  they 
would  have  to  settle  no  heartrending  questions  of 
patronage,  nor  to  decree  the  superannuation  of 
elderly  worthies.  The  brutal  instancy  of  physical 
wants  might  be  trying;  but  they  would  at  least  be 
spared,  until  they  were  rescued,  the  solving  of  any 
stiff  conundrums  of  professional  ethics. 

Moulding  the  pet  recreations  of  civilized  men 
you  find  their  craving  to  have  something  simple  to 
do  for  a  change,  to  be  given  an  easy  one  after  so 
many  twisters.  People  whose  work  is  the  making 
of  calculations  or  the  manipulation  of  thoughts 
have  been  known  to  find  a  curiously  restful  pleas- 
ure in  chopping  firewood  or  painting  tool-sheds 
till  their  backs  ache.  It  soothes  them  with  a  flat- 
tering sense  of  getting  something  useful  done 
straight  off.  So  much  of  their  "  real  "  work  Is 
a  taking  of  some  minute  or  Indirect  means  to  some 
end  remote,  dimly  and  doubtfully  visible,  possibly 

6 


THE    VISION 

— for  the  dread  thought  will  intrude — not  worth 
attaining.  The  pile  of  chopped  wood  is  at  least 
a  spice  of  the  ultimate  good:  visible,  palpable,  it  is 
success;  and  the  advanced  and  complex  man,  the 
statesman  or  sociologist  who  has  chopped  it,  es- 
capes for  the  moment  from  all  his  own  advance- 
ment and  complication,  and  savours  in  quiet  ec- 
stasy one  of  the  sane  primeval  satisfactions. 

A  country  fellow  at  the  pleugh, 
His  acre's  tilled,  he's  right  eneugh  ; 
A  country  girl  at  her  wheel, 
Her  dizzen's  done,   she's  unco  weel. 

The  climber  of  mountains  seeks  a  similar  rapture 
by  going  to  places  where  he  is,  in  full  exertion,  the 
sum  of  his  physical  faculties,  little  more.  Here 
all  his  hopes  are  for  things  close  at  hand:  ambi- 
tion lives  along  one  arm  stretched  out  to  grasp 
a  rock  eighteen  inches  away;  his  sole  aim  in  life 
may  be  simply  the  top  of  a  thirty-foot  cleft  in  a 
steep  face  of  stone.  At  home,  in  the  thick  of  his 
work,  he  had  seemed  to  be  everlastingly  thread- 
ing mazes  that  no  one  could  thread  right  to  the 
end;  here,  on  the  crags,  it  is  all  divinely  simplified; 
who  would  trouble  his  head  with  subtle  question- 
ings about  what  human  life  will,  might,  or  ought 
to  be  when  every  muscle  and  nerve  are  tautly  en- 
gaged in  the  primal  job  of  sticking  to  life  as  it  is? 

7 


DISENCHANTMENT 

To  have  for  his  work  these  raptures  of  play  was 
the  joy  of  the  new  recruit  who  had  common  health 
and  good-humour.  All  his  maturity's  worries  and 
burdens  seemed,  by  some  magical  change,  to  have 
dropped  from  him;  no  difficult  choices  had  to  be 
made  any  longer;  hardly  a  moral  chart  to  be 
conned;  no  one  had  any  finances  to  mind;  nobody 
else's  fate  was  put  in  his  hands,  and  not  even  his 
own.  All  was  fixed  from  above,  down  to  the  time 
of  his  going  to  bed  and  the  way  he  must  lace  up  his 
boots.  His  vow  of  willing  self-enslavement  for 
a  season  had  brought  him  the  peace  of  the  sol- 
dier, which  passeth  understanding  as  wholly  as 
that  of  the  saint,  the  blitheness  of  heart  that  comes 
to  both  with  their  clarifying,  tranquillizing  acqui- 
escence in  some  mystic  will  outside  their  own.  Im- 
mersed in  that  Dantean  repose  of  utter  obedience 
the  men  slept  like  babies,  ate  like  hunters,  and  re- 
discovered the  joy  of  infancy  in  getting  some 
rather  elementary  bodily  movement  to  come  right. 
They  saw  everything  that  God  had  made,  and 
behold  I  it  was  very  good.    That  was  the  vision. 

IV 

The  mental  peace,  the  physical  joy,  the  divinely 
simplified  sense  of  having  one  clear  aim,  the  re- 
moteness from  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  all  fa- 

8 


THE    VISION 

voured  a  tropical  growth  of  illusion.  A  man,  says 
Tennyson,  "  imputes  himself."  If  he  be  decent  he 
readily  thinks  other  people  are  decent.  Here  were 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  quite  commonplace  per- 
sons rendered,  by  comradeship  in  an  enthusiasm, 
self-denying,  cheerful,  unexacting,  sanely  exalted, 
substantially  good.  To  get  the  more  fit  to  be 
quickly  used  men  would  give  up  even  the  little 
darling  vices  which  are  nearest  to  many  simple 
hearts.  Men  who  had  entertained  an  almost  rea- 
soned passion  for  whisky,  men  who  in  civil  life  had 
messed  up  careers  for  it  and  left  all  and  followed 
it,  would  cut  off  their  whisky  lest  it  should  spoil 
their  marching.  Little  white,  prim  clerks  from 
Putney — men  whose  souls  were  saturated  with  the 
consciousness  of  class — would  abdicate  freely  and 
wholeheartedly  their  sense  of  the  wide,  un- 
plumbed,  estranging  seas  that  ought  to  roar  be- 
tween themselves  and  Covent  Garden  market  por- 
ters. Many  men  who  had  never  been  dangerous 
rivals  to  St.  Anthony  kept  an  unwonted  hold  on 
themselves  during  the  months  when  hundreds  of 
reputable  women  and  girls  round  every  camp 
seemed  to  have  been  suddenly  smitten  with  a  Bac- 
chantic  frenzy.  Real,  constitutional  lazy  fellows 
would  buy  little  cram-books  of  drill  out  of  their 
pay  and  sweat  them  up  at  night  so  as  to  get  on  the 

9 


DISENCHANTMENT 

faster.  Men  warned  for  a  guard  next  day  would 
agree  among  themselves  to  get  up  an  hour  before 
the  pre-dawn  winter  Reveille  to  practise  among 
themselves  the  beautiful  symbolic  ritual  of  mount- 
ing guard  in  the  hope  of  approaching  the  far-off, 
longed-for  ideal  of  smartness,  the  passport  to 
France,  Men  were  known  to  subscribe  in  order 
to  get  some  dummy  bombs  made  with  which  to 
practise  bomb-throwing  by  themselves  on  summer 
nights  after  drilling  and  marching  from  six  in  the 
morning  till  five  in  the  evening.  How  could  they 
not  have  the  illusion  that  the  whole  nation's  sense 
of  comradeship  went  as  far  as  their  own? 

Who  of  all  those  who  were  in  camp  at  that  time, 
and  still  are  alive,  will  not  remember  until  he  dies 
the  second  boyhood  that  he  had  in  the  late  frosts 
and  then  in  the  swiftly  filling  and  bursting  spring 
and  early  summer  of  1915  ?  The  awakening  bird- 
notes  of  Reveille  at  dawn,  the  two-mile  run 
through  auroral  mists  breaking  over  a  still  invio- 
late England,  the  men's  smoking  breath  and  the 
swish  of  their  feet  brushing  the  dew  from  the  tips 
of  the  June  grass  and  printing  their  track  of 
darker  green  on  the  pearly-grey  turf;  the  long, 
intent  morning  parades  under  the  gummy  shine  of 
chestnut  buds  in  the  deepening  meadows;  the  peace 
of  the  tranquil  hours  on  guard  at  some  seques- 

10 


THE    VISION 

tered  post,  alone  with  the  Sylvester  midnight,  the 
wheeling  stars  and  the  quiet  breathing  of  the  earth 
in  its  sleep,  when  time,  to  the  sentry's  sense,  fleets 
on  unexpectedly  fast  and  hfe  seems  much  too 
short  because  day  has  slipped  into  day  without  the 
night-long  sleeper's  false  sense  of  a  pause;  and 
then  jocund  days  of  marching  and  digging  trenches 
in  the  sun ;  the  silly  little  songs  on  the  road  that 
seemed,  then,  to  have  tunes  most  human,  pretty, 
and  jolly;  the  dinners  of  haversack  rations  you 
ate  as  you  sat  on  the  roadmakers'  heaps  of 
chopped  stones  or  lay  back  among  buttercups. 

When  you  think  of  the  youth  that  you  have  lost, 
the  times  when  it  seems  to  you  now  that  life  was 
most  poignantly  good  may  not  be  the  ones  when 
everything  seemed  at  the  time  to  go  well  with  your 
plans,  and  the  world,  as  they  say,  to  be  at  your 
feet;  rather  some  few  unaccountable  moments 
when  nothing  took  place  that  was  out  of  the  way 
and  yet  some  word  of  a  friend's,  or  a  look  on  the 
face  of  the  sky,  the  taste  of  a  glass  of  spring 
water,  the  plash  of  laughter  and  oars  heard  across 
midsummer  meadows  at  night  raised  the  soul  of 
enjoyment  within  you  to  strangely  higher  powers 
of  itself.  That  spirit  bloweth  and  is  still:  it  will 
not  rise  for  our  whistling  nor  keep  a  time-table; 
no  wine  that  we  know  can  give  us  anything  more 

II 


DISENCHANTMENT 

than  a  fugitive  caricature  of  its  ecstasies.  When 
it  has  blown  free  we  remember  it  always,  and 
know,  without  proof,  that  while  the  rapture  was 
there  we  were  not  drunk,  but  wise;  that  for  a  mo- 
ment some  intervening  darkness  had  thinned  and 
we  were  seeing  further  than  we  can  see  now  into 
the  heart  of  life. 

To  one  recollection  at  least  it  has  seemed  that 
the  New  Army's  spring-tide  of  faith  and  joyous  il- 
lusion came  to  its  height  on  a  night  late  in  the  most 
beautiful  May  of  19 15,  in  a  hut  where  thirty  men 
slept  near  a  forest  in  Essex.  Nothing  particular 
happened;  the  night  was  like  others.  Yet  in  the 
times  that  came  after,  when  half  of  the  thirty 
were  dead  and  most  of  the  others  jaded  and 
soured,  the  feel  of  that  night  would  come  back 
with  the  strange  distinctness  of  those  picked,  re- 
membered mornings  and  evenings  of  boyhood 
when  everything  that  there  was  became  everlast- 
ingly memorable  as  though  it  had  been  the  morn- 
ing or  evening  of  the  first  day.  Ten  o'clock  came 
and  Lights  Out,  but  a  kind  of  luminous  bloom  still 
on  the  air  and  a  bugle  blowing  Last  Post  in  some 
far-away  camp  that  kept  worse  hours  than  we.  I 
believe  the  whole  hut  held  its  breath  to  hear  the 
notes  better.  Who  wouldn't,  to  listen  to  that  most 
lovely  and  melancholy  of  calls,  the  noble  death  of 

12 


THE    VISION 

each  day's  life,  a  sound  moving  about  hither  and 
thither,  Hke  a  veiled  figure  making  gestures  both 
stately  and  tender,  among  the  dim  thoughts  that 
we  have  about  death  the  approaching  extinguisher 
— resignation  and  sadness  and  unfulfilment  and 
triumph  all  coming  back  to  the  overbearing  sense 
of  extinction  in  those  two  recurrent  notes  of 
"  Lights  Out  "  ?  One  listens  as  if  with  bowed 
mind,  as  though  saying  "  Yes;  out,  out,  brief  can- 
dle." A  moment's  silence  to  let  it  sink  in  and  the 
chaffing  and  laughter  broke  out  like  a  splash  of 
cool  water  in  summer  again.  That  hut  always 
went  to  bed  laughing  and  chaffing  all  round,  and, 
though  there  was  no  wit  among  us,  the  stories 
tasted  of  life,  the  inexhaustible  game  and  adven- 
ture. Looker,  ex-marine  turned  soldier,  told  us 
how  he  had  once  gone  down  in  a  diving-suit  to  find 
a  lost  anchor  and  struck  on  the  old  tin  lining  out 
of  a  crate,  from  which  some  octopian  beast  with 
long  feelers  had  reached  out  at  him,  and  the  feel- 
ers had  come  nearer  and  nearer  through  the  dim 
water.  "What  did  you  do.  Filthy?"  somebody 
asked  (we  called  Looker  "  Filthy  "  with  friendly 
jocoseness).  "  I  'opped  it,"  the  good  fellow  said, 
and  the  sane  anti-climax  of  real  life  seemed  twice 
as  good  as  the  climax  that  any  Hugo  or  Verne 
could  have  put  to  the  yarn.     Another  described 

13 


DISENCHANTMENT 

the  great  life  he  had  lived  as  an  old  racing  "  hen," 
or  minor  sutler  of  the  sport  of  kings.  Hard  work, 
of  course.  "  All  day  down  at  Epsom  openin' 
doors  an'  brushin'  coats  and  shiftin'  truck  for 
bookies  till  you'd  make,  perhaps,  two  dollars  an' 
speculate  it  on  the  las'  race  and  off  back  'ome  to 
London  'ungry,  on  your  'oofs."  Once  a  friend 
of  his,  who  had  had  a  bad  day,  had  not  walked — 
had  slipped  into  the  London  train,  and  at  Vaux- 
hall,  where  tickets  were  taken,  had  gone  to  earth 
under  the  seat  with  a  brief  appeal  to  his  fellow 
travellers  :  "  Gents,  I  rely  on  your  honour."  The 
stout  narrator  could  see  no  joke  at  all  in  the 
phrase.  He  was  rather  scandalized  by  our  great 
roar  of  laughter.  "  'Is  honour!  And  'im  robbin' 
the  comp'ny  I  'nough  to  take  away  a  man's  kerrik- 
ter!  "  said  the  patient  walker-home  in  emergency. 
It  made  life  seem  too  wonderful  to  end;  such  were 
the  untold  reserves  that  we  had  in  this  nation 
of  men  with  a  hold  on  themselves,  of  hardly  up- 
rightness; even  this  unhelped  son  of  the  gutter, 
living  from  hand  to  mouth  in  the  common  lodging- 
houses  of  slums,  a  parasite  upon  parasites,  poor 
little  animalcule  doing  odd  jobs  for  the  caterpillars 
of  the  commonwealth — even  he  could  persist  in 
carrying  steadily,  clear  of  the  dirt,  the  full  vase  of 
his  private  honour.    What,  then,  must  be  the  un- 


THE    VISION 

used  stores  of  greedless  and  fearless  straightness 
in  others  above  us,  generals  and  statesmen,  men 
in  whom,  as  in  bank-porters,  character  is  three 
parts  of  the  trade!  The  world  seemed  clean  that 
night;  such  a  lovely  unreason  of  optimist  faith  was 
astir  in  us  all, 

We  felt  for  that  time  ravish 'd  above  earth 
And  possess'd  joys  not  promised  at  our  birth. 

It  seemed  hardly  credible  now,  in  this  soured 
and  quarrelsome  country  and  time,  that  so  many 
men  of  different  classes  and  kinds,  thrown  to- 
gether at  random,  should  ever  have  been  so  sim- 
ply and  happily  friendly,  trustful,  and  keen.  But 
they  were,  and  they  imagined  that  all  their  betters 
were  too.  That  was  the  paradise  that  the  bottom 
fell  out  of. 


tS 


CHAPTER     II 

MISGIVING 


WHAT  could  the  New  Army  not  have 
done  if  all  the  time  of  its  training  had 
been  fully  used!  A  few,  at  least,  of  its 
units  had  a  physique  above  that  of  the  Guards; 
many  did  more  actual  hours  of  work,  before  go- 
ing abroad,  than  Guardsmen  in  peace-time  do  in 
two  years;  all  were  at  first  as  keen  as  boys,  col- 
lectors, or  spaniels — whichever  are  keenest;  when 
the  official  rations  of  warlike  instruction  fell  short 
they  would  go  about  hungrily  trying  to  scratch 
crumbs  of  that  provender  out  of  the  earth  like 
fowls  in  a  run. 

But  there  was  an  imp  of  frustration  about.  He 
pervaded,  like  Ariel,  all  the  labouring  ship  of  our 
State.  I  had  seen  him  in  Lancashire  once,  on  one 
of  the  early  days  of  the  war,  when  fifty  young  min- 
ers marched  in  from  one  pit,  with  their  colliery 
band,  to  enlist  at  an  advertised  place  and  time  of 
enlistment.  The  futilitarian  elf  took  care  that 
the  shutters  were  up  and  nobody  there,  so  that 
the  men  should  kick  their  heels  all  the  day  in  the 
street  and  walk  back  at  night  with  their  tails  be- 
tween their  legs,  and  the  band  not  playing,  to  tell 
their  mates   that  the  whole   thing  was   a  mug's 

i6 


MISGIVING 

game,  a  ramp,  got  up  by  the  hot-air  merchants 
and  crooks  in  control.  The  imp  must  have 
grinned,  not  quite  as  all  of  us  have  grinned  since, 
on  the  wrong  side  of  our  mouths,  at  the  want  of 
faith  that  miners  have  in  the  great  and  wise  who 
rule  over  them.  Another  practical  joke  of  his 
was  to  slip  into  the  War  Office  or  Admiralty  and 
tear  up  any  letters  he  found  from  people  offering 
gifts  of  motor-cars,  motor-boats,  steam-yachts, 
training  grounds,  etc.,  lest  they  be  answered  and 
the  writers  and  other  friends  of  their  country  en- 
couraged. Perhaps  his  brightest  triumph  of  all 
was  to  dress  himself  up  as  England  and  send  away 
with  a  flea  in  her  ear  the  Ireland  whom  the  won- 
der-working Redmond  had  induced  to  offer  to  fight 
at  our  side.  Those  were  a  few  of  his  master- 
pieces. Between  times  he  would  keep  his  hand  in 
by  putting  it  into  the  Old  Army's  head  to  take  the 
keenness  out  of  the  New. 

Dearest  of  all  the  New  Army's  infant  illusions 
was  the  Old  Army — still  at  that  time  the  demi- 
god host  of  an  unshattered  legend  of  Mons.  To 
the  new  recruits  any  old  Regular  sergeant  was 
more — if  the  world  can  hold  more — than  a  county 
cricketer  is  to  a  small  boy  at  school.  He  had  the 
talisman;  he  was  a  vessel  full  of  the  grace  by 
which  everything  was  to  be  saved;  like  a  king,  he 

17 


DISENCHANTMENT 

could  "  touch  for  "  the  malady  of  unsoldlerliness. 
How  could  he  err,  how  could  he  shirk,  now  that 
the  fate  of  a  world  hung  upon  him? 

There  was  something  in  that.  No  doubt  there 
always  is  in  illusions.  They  are  not  delusions. 
7  he  pick  of  the  old  N.C.O.'s  of  the  Regular  Army 
were  packed  as  tight  as  bits  of  radium  with  vir- 
tues and  powers.  A  man  of  fifty-five  who  came 
back  to  the  army  from  spending  ten  years  in  a 
farcical  uniform  whistling  for  taxis  outside  a  flash 
music-hall  would  teach  every  rank  in  a  battalion 
its  duties  for  ^s.  Sd.  a  day — coaching  the  dug-out 
colonel  in  the  new  infantry  drill,  the  field  officers 
in  court-martial  procedure,  the  chaplain  in  details 
of  drum-head  worship,  the  medical  officer  in  the 
order  of  sick  parades,  the  subalterns  and  N.C.O.'s 
in  camp  economy,  field  hygiene,  and  what  not,  and 
always  holding  the  attention  of  a  man  or  a  mess 
or  a  battalion  fixed  fast  by  the  magic  of  his  own 
oaken  character,  his  simple,  vivid  mind,  his  pas- 
sion for  getting  things  right,  and  his  humorous, 
patient  knowledge  of  mankind.  Even  such  minor 
masterpieces  as  average  Guards  ex-sergeant-ma- 
jors were  rather  godlike  on  parade.  In  drill,  at 
any  rate,  they  had  the  circumstantial  vision  and 
communicable  fire  of  the  prophets.  Early  in  19 15 
a  little  famished  London  cab-tout,  a  recruit,  still 

18 


MISGIVING 

rectilinear  as  a  starved  cat  even  after  a  month  of 
army  rations,  was  to  be  heard  praying  softly  at 
night  in  his  cot  that  he  might  be  made  like  unto 
one  of  these,  whom  he  named. 

II 

Where,  then,  did  the  first  shiver  of  disillusion 
begin?  Perhaps  with  some  trivial  incident.  Say 
a  new-born  company,  quartered  in  a  great  town, 
was  sent  out  for  a  long  afternoon's  marching. 
Only  through  long,  steady  grinds  can  the  perfect 
rhythm  of  marching,  like  that  of  rowing,  be  gen- 
erated at  last.  The  men,  youthfully  eager  to  kiss 
all  possible  rods  and  endure  any  obtainable  hard- 
ness, march  forth  in  a  high  state  of  delight — they 
are  going  to  learn  how  to  march  to  Berlin !  No 
officer  being  present — and  scarcely  any  existing  as 
yet — a  sergeant-major  is  in  command.  He  is  a 
very  old  hand.  For  twenty  minutes  he  leads  his 
250  adorers  into  the  thick  of  a  populous  quarter. 
Then  he  orders  them  to  fall  out.  A  public-house 
resembling  Buckingham  Palace,  but  smaller,  is 
near.  Most  of  the  men,  in  their  ardour,  stand 
about  on  the  kerb,  ready  to  leap  back  to  their 
places  as  soon  as  the  whistle  shall  sound.  A  few 
thirsty  souls  jostle  hurriedly  into  the  bars,  where 
they  find  that  arrangements  for  serving  a  multi- 

19 


DISENCHANTMENT 

tude  are  surprisingly  complete.  Soon  they  are 
further  reassured  by  descrying  the  sergeant-ma- 
jor's handsome  form,  like  Tam  o'  Shanter's, 
"  planted  unco'  right  "  in  a  chair  in  an  inner  holy 
of  holies  along  with  the  landlord.  This  esoteric 
session  has  an  air  of  permanence;  the  sergeant- 
major  is  evidently  au  mieux  with  the  management. 
The  thirsty  souls  settle  down  to  their  beer. 

Five  minutes,  twenty,  half  an  hour  pass  fairly 
fast  for  them,  less  fast  for  the  keener  warriors 
pawing  the  kerbstone  without.  At  the  end  of  an 
hour  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  kerbstone  zealots  have 
been  successfully  frozen  into  the  bars.  The  rest 
stare  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise.  Rumour 
shakes  her  wings  and  begins  to  fly  round.  The 
sergeant-major,  she  says,  is  holding  a  species  of 
court  in  the  depths  of  the  pub;  some  privates  with 
money  upon  them,  children  of  this  world,  are 
pressing  in,  she  says,  even  now,  into  that  heart 
of  the  rose,  and  with  a  few  manly  words  are  stand- 
ing the  great  man  the  extremely  expensive  combi- 
nation of  nectars  that  he  prefers.  "  Were  it  not 
better  done  as  others  use?" — the  Spartan  re- 
siduum on  the  kerb  is  diminishing.  Another  hour 
goes;  only  an  inconsiderable  remnant  of  Spartans 
is  left;  these  are  exchanging  profane  remarks 
about  patriotism  and  other  virtues.     One  of  them 

20 


MISGIVING 

quotes  a  famous  Conservative  statesman  whose 
footman  he  was  before  he  enlisted  :  "I  believe  we 
shall  win,  in  spite  of  the  Regular  Army."  When 
just  enough  time  is  left  to  march  back  to  quarters 
the  whistle  is  blown,  the  men  slouch  into  their 
places  and  stump  unrhythmically  home,  revolving 
many  things  according  to  their  several  natures. 
A  child  who  has  rashly  taken  its  parent  on  trust, 
and  yet  more  rashly  taken  the  parent's  all-round 
perfection  as  some  sorL  of  sample  and  proof  of  a 
creditable  government  of  the  world,  must  have  a 
good  deal  of  mental  rearrangement  to  do  the  first 
time  the  parent  comes  home  full  of  liquor  and  sells 
the  furniture  to  get  some  more. 

Ill 

Perhaps,  in  another  company  or  another  bat- 
talion, some  private  of  relative  wealth  has  felt,  in 
the  strength  of  his  youth  and  the  heat  of  his  zeal, 
that  he  wants  more  to  do.  He  longs  to  get  on 
with  the  job.  So  he  guilelessly  goes  to  his  own 
sergeant-major  and  asks  him  if  there  is  a  chance 
of  getting  some  lessons  in  bayonet-fighting  any- 
where in  the  town.  The  sergeant-major  sizes  him 
up  with  a  stare.  "  You're  a  fine  likely  man,"  he 
says,  "  for  a  stripe."  He  stares  harder.  "  Or 
three,"  he  subjoins. 

21 


DISENCHANTMENT 

The  gilded  youth  is  confounded.  He  an 
N.C.O. !  He  would  as  soon  have  thought  of  be- 
ing a  primate.  "  I'll  give  you,"  the  Old  Army 
continues,  "  the  lessons  myself.  It'll  be  twelve  quid 
— for  the  lot."  To  reproduce  the  emphasis  upon 
the  last  three  words  is  beyond  the  resources  of 
typography. 

The  gilded  youth  may  feel  a  slight  pricking  in 
Ais  thumbs.  Still,  there  is  no  overt  crook  in  the 
deal.  The  teaching  is  sure  to  be  good.  And  he 
has  the  cash  and  an  inexact  sense  of  values.  So 
he  agrees.  The  senior  man-at-arms  expresses  a 
preference  for  ready  money.  Agreed,  too.  After 
one  lesson  the  tutor  is  frankly  bored  by  his  tu- 
torial function.  "  Hang  it,"  he  says,  "  what's  the 
sense  of  you  and  me  sweating  our  'oly  guts  out? 
You've  paid,  and  you'll  find  I  won't  bilk  you." 
Youth  is  mystified;  feels  it  is  getting  somewhat 
short  weight.  But  what  are  acolytes  against  high 
priests?    Youth  leaves  it  at  that. 

In  two  or  three  weeks  the  frustrated  pupil  is 
sent  for  by  his  frustrator.  A  man  is  wanted  for 
Post  Corporal,  or  even  for  Battalion  Provost  Ser- 
geant. What  would  the  gilded  youth  say  to  the 
job?  On  his  saying  nothing  at  first  the  sergeant- 
major,  with  swiftly  rising  contempt  for  such 
friarly  hesitancy,  recites  the  beauties  of  this  piece 

22 


MISGIVING 

of  preferment.  "  Cushiest  job  in  the  'ole  outfit ! 
Long  as  you're  sober  enough  to  stand  up  at  the 
staff  parade  of  a  night,  that's  all  there  is  to  it. 
Where'd  the  crime  be  among  you  'oly  Chris- 
tians? "  (The  almost  fanatical  abstention  of  the 
New  Army  from  ordinary  military  crimes  often 
gave  some  scandal  to  experts  drawn  from  the  Old. 
They  regarded  it  with  perplexity  and  suspicion. 
The  phenomenon  was  really  simple,  the  men  being 
in  panic-fear  of  getting  left  behind  in  England  if 
their  unit  should  suddenly  be  sent  abroad.)  While 
the  gilded  youth  tries  to  explain,  without  a  lapse 
from  tact,  that  the  ranks  are  good  enough  for  him- 
self he  feels  a  regal  scorn  beat  down  on  him  like 
a  vertical  sun.  A  fulmination  follows.  "  Then 
what  the  'ell  did  you  ever  come  to  me  for?  'Op 
off!     Out  of  it!" 

The  youth  retires  feeling  that  he  has  somehow 
strayed  into  a  black  Hst.  He  talks  it  over  with  a 
friend.  The  friend,  he  finds,  has  heard  something 
like  it  from  somebody  else.  Ribald  jibes  are  soon 
flying  about — "  Four  pound  a  stripe!  "  "  Stripes 
are  ris'  to-day!  "  "  Corporals,  three  for  a  ten- 
ner! "  The  story  goes  that  a  little  "  Scotch  dra- 
per," the  worst  drill  in  a  section,  has  felt  that  in 
this  newly  revealed  world  his  professional  credit 
for  tactful  effrontery  is  at  stake;  he  has  bet  a  fiver 

23 


DISENCHANTMENT 

that  he  will  offer  the  bare  market  price  of  a  recom- 
mendation for  "  lance-Jack  "  and  bring  the  thing 
off;  the  enterprise  has  prospered  and  the  architect 
of  his  own  fortunes  is  wearing  the  stripe,  spend- 
ing his  pound  balance  on  the  transaction,  com- 
manding his  brethren,  and  enjoying  his  new  dis- 
pensation from  fatigues.  The  band  of  brothers 
begin  to  look  at  each  other  with  some  circumspec- 
tion. They  wonder.  How  far  does  the  dirty 
work  go  ?  Who  may  not  try  it  on  next  ?  And  did 
not  somebody  say  he  had  seen  the  stuff  pass  be- 
tween the  contractor  who  emptied  the  swill-tubs 
and  the  sergeant-cook  who  filled  them  with  half- 
legs  of  mutton?  What  was  that  shorter  creed  to 
which  the  sergeants'  mess  waiters  said  that  the 
Regular  sergeants  always  recurred  in  their  cups — ■ 
"Stick  together,  boys,"  and  "Anything  can  be 
wangled  in  the  army"? 

IV 

What  about  officers,  too?  The  men  wonder 
again.  That  new  company  commander  who 
started  in  as  a  captain,  but  never  could  give  the 
simplest  command  on  parade  without  his  sergeant- 
major  to  give  him  the  words  like  a  parson  doing  a 
marriage?  What  about  little  Y.,  who  suddenly 
got  a  commission  when  he  was  doing  a  fortnight's 

24 


MISGIVING 

C.B.  for  coming  on  parade  with  a  dirty  neck? 
And  the  major's  lecture  on  musketry?  And  the 
colonel's  on  field  operations? 

Part  of  the  scheme  of  training  is  that  all  the 
senior  officers  should  lecture  to  the  men  on  some- 
thing or  other — marching,  map-reading,  field  hy- 
giene, and  what  not.  An  excellent  plan,  but  ter- 
ribly hard  on  an  old  Regular  Army  not  exactly 
officered  by  the  brightest  wits  of  public  schools. 
The  major's  musketry  lecture  has  made  the  men 
think.  He  has  told  them  first  that,  just  to  let  them 
know  that  he  was  not  talking  through  his  hat,  he 
might  say  he  had  been,  in  his  time,  the  champion 
shot  of  the  Army  in  India.  The  men  had  known 
that  already — had  doted,  in  fact,  on  anything 
known  to  the  glory  of  any  of  their  commanders. 
Fair  enough,  too,  they  had  felt,  that  a  man  should 
buck  a  bit  about  what  he  had  done.  Anyone 
would.  And  so  they  had  not  even  smiled.  But 
then  the  major  had  amplified.  He  had  recited 
his  moderate,  but  not  bad,  earlier  scores  in  com- 
petitions: he  had  given  statistics  of  his  rapid  rise; 
he  had  painted  the  astonishment  of  all  who  saw 
him  shoot  in  those  days — above  all,  the  delight 
of  the  men  of  his  old  regiment;  for,  the  major  had 
said,  "  I  may  have  faults,  but  this  at  least  I  can 

25 


DISENCHANTMENT 

say,  that  wherever  I  went  the  men  simply  wor- 
shipped the  ground  that  I  trod  on." 

All  this  had  filled  the  first  half  of  the  lec- 
turer's hour.  The  men  had  begun  to  look  at  each 
other  cautiously,  marvelling.  When  would  the  ma- 
jor begin?  Could  this  be  a  Regular  Army  cus- 
tom? But  then  the  major  had  warmed  to  his 
subject.  With  rising  zest  he  had  described  the 
dramatic  tension  pervading  the  butts  as  the  crisis 
of  each  of  his  greater  triumphs  approached.  And 
then  the  climax  had  come — "the  one  time  that  1 
failed."  In  sombre  tones  the  major  had  told  how 
five  shots  had  to  be  fired  at  one  out  of  several 
targets  arranged  In  a  row.  "I  fired  my  first  four 
shots.  A  bull  each  time.  I  fired  again,  and  the 
marker  signalled  a  miss!  Everyone  present  was 
thunderstruck.  I  knew  what  had  happened.  I  said 
to  the  butt  officer,  '  Do  you  mind,  sir,  enquiring  if 
there  is  any  shot  on  the  target  to  the  right  of 
mine?'  He  did  so.  'Yes,'  was  signalled  back. 
'  What  is  it?  '  I  asked,  though  I  knew.  '  A  bull' 
'  That  was  my  last  shot,'  said  I.  I  had  made  the 
mistake  of  my  life.  I  had  fired  at  the  wrong  tar- 
get.   Fall  out." 

On  this  tragic  climax  the  lecture  had  ended,  the 
men  had  streamed  out,  some  silent,  bewildered, 

26 


MISGIVING 

some  dropping  words  of  amazement.     "  Lecture! 
W'y>  it's  the  man's  pers'nal  'istory!  " 

And  then  the  CO.  has  lectured  on  training  in 
field  operations — the  old,  cold  colonel,  upright, 
dutiful,  unintelligent,  waxen,  drawn  away  by  a 
genuine  patriotism  from  his  roses  and  croquet  to 
help  joylessly  in  the  queer  labour  of  trying  to  teach 
this  uncouth  New  Army  a  few  of  the  higher  quali- 
ties of  the  old.  Too  honest  a  man  to  pretend  that 
he  was  not  taking  all  that  he  said  in  his  lecture 
out  of  the  Army's  official  manual.  Infantry  Train' 
ing,  1 9 14,  he  has  held  the  little  red  book  in  his 
hand,  read  out  frankly  a  sentence  at  a  time  from 
that  terse  and  luminous  masterpiece  of  instruction, 
and  then  has  tried  to  "  explain  "  it  while  the  men 
gaped  at  the  strange  contrast  between  the  thing 
clearly  said  in  the  book  and  the  same  thing 
plunged  into  obscurity  by  the  poor  colonel's  woolly 
and  faltering  verbiage.  Half  the  men  had  bought 
the  little  book  themselves  and  devoured  it  as  hun- 
grily as  boys  consume  a  manual  of  rude  boat- 
building or  of  camping-out.  And  here  was  the 
colonel  bringing  his  laboured  jets  of  darkness  to 
show  the  way  through  sunlight;  elucidating  plain- 
ness itself  with  the  tangled  clues  of  his  own  mind's 
confusion,  like  Bardolph:  "'Accommodated'; 
that  is,  when  a  man  is,  as  they  say,  accommodated; 

27 


DISENCHANTMENT 

or  when   a  man  is,  being,   whereby   a'   may  be 
thought  to  be  accommodated." 


A  favourite  trick  with  the  disillusioning  imp  was 
to  get  hold  of  authority's  wisely  drafted  time- 
table of  work  for  a  new  division  in  training  and 
mix  up  all  the  subjects  and  times.  The  effect  must 
have  often  diverted  the  author  of  this  piece  of 
humour.  Some  day  a  company,  say,  would  begin 
to  learn  bayonet-fighting.  This  would  at  once 
revive  in  the  men  the  fading  ecstasies  of  their  first 
simple  faith.  Whenever  instructors  said — "  Now 
then,  men,  I  want  to  see  a  bit  more  murder  in  them 
eyes  "  pleasant  little  thrills  of  chartered  pugnacity 
would  inspirit  them.  This,  they  would  feel,  was 
the  real  thing;  this  was  what  they  were  there  for. 
Then  just  as,  perhaps,  they  approached  the  engag- 
ing and  manifestly  serviceable  "  short  jab  "  Puck's 
little  witticism  would  suddenly  tell;  bayonet-fight- 
ing would  abruptly  stop;  an  urgent  order  would 
come  from  on  high  to  "  get  on  with  night  opera- 
tions "  or  "  get  on  with  outpost  work,"  and  one 
of  these  bodies  of  knowledge  would,  in  its  turn, 
be  partly  imbibed  by  the  infant  mind  and  then  as 
suddenly  withdrawn  from  its  thirsty  lips  for  some- 
thing else  to  be  started  instead — perhaps  a  thing 

28 


MISGIVING 

that  had  already  been  once  started  and  dropped. 
In  the  working  out  of  this  fantastic  pattern  of 
smatterings  a  company  might  begin  to  learn  bay- 
onet-fighting three  or  four  times  and  each  time  be 
switched  off  it  before  getting  half  way,  and  go  to 
France  in  the  end  with  the  A. B.C.  of  each  of  sev- 
eral alphabets  learnt  to  boredom  and  the  X.Y.Z. 
of  none  of  them  touched,  the  men  being  left  to 
improvise  the  short  jab  and  other  far-on  letters  by 
the  light  of  nature,  in  intimate  contact,  perhaps, 
with  less  humorously  instructed  Germans. 

All  this  was  not  universal.  Still,  it  could  and 
did  happen.  And  then  the  men  stared  and  mar- 
velled. Authority,  it  is  true,  had,  at  the  worst, 
some  gusts  of  passion  for  perfection.  But  even 
these  might  fortify,  in  their  way,  the  new  occu- 
pant of  the  seat  of  the  scorners.  A  sudden  or- 
der might  come  for  a  brigade  or  other  inspection, 
and  then  authority  might  in  a  brief  hour  become 
like  mediaeval  man  when  he  fell  suddenly  ill  and 
the  pains  of  hell  gat  hold  of  his  mind  and  he  felt 
that  God  must  be  squared  without  conduct  because 
it  might  take  more  time  to  conduct  himself  than 
he  had  got.  In  this  pious  frenzy  all  attention  to 
measures  for  incommoding  the  Germans  would 
yield  to  the  primary  duty  of  whiting  the  sepulchre; 
energies  that  would   carry   a   HohenzoUern   Re- 

29 


DISENCHANTMENT 

doubt  would  be  put  into  the  evolution  of  sections 
which,  through  somebody's  slackness,  did  not  ex- 
ist, or  the  hiding  of  men  who,  through  some  one's 
mismanagement,  were  not  fit  to  be  seen  on  parade; 
old  N.C.O.'s  would  present  the  men  with  the  tip 
for  making  a  seemingly  full  valise  look  nicely  rec- 
tangular by  the  judicious  insertion  of  timber,  and 
other  homely  recipes  for  cleaning  the  outsides  of 
cups  and  platters.  "Eye-wash?"  these  children 
of  light  would  say,  as  they  taught.  "  Of  course, 
it's  all  eye-wash.  What  ain't  eye-wash  in  this 
old  world?" 

It  was  a  question  much  asked  at  the  time  by 
those  whose  post-war  inclinations  to  answer 
"  Nothing,  among  the  lot  who  run  England  now  " 
are  whitening  the  hair  of  statesmen.  They  were 
then  only  asking  "  How  far  does  it  go?  How 
much  of  the  timber  is  rotten  "  ?  Enough  to  bring 
down  the  whole  house?  Here,  there,  everywhere 
the  men's  new  suspicion  peered  about  in  the  dark 
and  the  half-light.  Most  of  the  men  were  the  al- 
most boundless  reservoirs  of  patience,  humility, 
and  good  humour  that  common  Englishmen  are. 
They  would  take  long  to  run  dry.  But  the  waters 
were  steadily  falling.  Most  of  them  had  come 
from  civil  employments  in  which  the  curse  of 
Adam  still  holds  and  a  man  must  either  work  or 

30 


MISGIVING 

get  out,  mind  his  P's  and  Q's,  or  go  short  of  his 
victuals.  They  knew  that  in  civil  life  a  foreman 
who  thieved  like  some  of  the  Regular  N.C.O.'s 
would  soon  be  in  the  street  or  in  gaol.  They  knew 
that  in  civil  life  a  manager  who  could  not  get 
down  to  the  point  any  better  than  the  colonel  or 
the  major  would  soon  have  the  business  piled  up 
on  the  rocks.  Here  was  an  eye-opening  find — a 
world  in  which  any  old  rule  of  that  kind  could  be 
dodged  if  you  got  the  right  tip.  It  became  the 
dominant  topic  for  talk,  more  dominant  even  than 
food,  the  staple  theme  of  the  conversation  of  sol- 
diers. How  far  did  the  rottenness  go?  Would 
they  ever  get  to  the  other  side  of  this  bog  through 
which  poor  old  England  was  wading?  If  you 
bored  deeper  and  deeper  still  into  this  amazing 
old  Regular  Army  would  there  ever  come  a  point 
at  which  you  would  strike  the  good  firm  stone  of 
English  decency  and  sense  again?  And  was  it 
open  to  hope  that  in  Germany,  too,  such  failures 
abounded — that  these  diseases  of  ours  were  rife  in 
all  armies  and  not  in  the  British  alone,  so  that 
there  might  be  a  chance  for  us  still,  as  there  is 
for  one  toothless  dog  fighting  another? 

Whatever  else  might  lack  in  our  training-camps 
throughout  England  during  the  spring  and  sum- 
mer of  19 1 5,  good  fresh  food  for  suspicion  always 

31 


DISENCHANTMENT 

abounded.  Runlets  of  news  and  rumour  came  trick- 
ling from  France;  wounded  soldiers  talked  and 
could  not  be  censored;  they  talked  of  the  failure 
of  French;  of  the  sneer  on  the  face  of  France; 
of  Staff  work  that  hung  up  whole  platoons  of  our 
men,  like  old  washing  or  scarecrows,  to  rot  on  un- 
cut German  wire;  of  little,  splendid  bands  of  com- 
pany officers  and  men  who  did  take  bits  of  enemy 
trench,  in  spite  of  it  all,  and  then  were  bombed  to 
death  by  the  Germans  at  leisure,  no  support  com- 
ing, no  bombs  to  throw  back — and  here,  at  home, 
old  Regular  colonels  were  saying  to  hollow 
squares  of  their  men:  "I  hear  that  in  France 
there's  a  certain  amount  of  throwing  of  some 
sort  of  ginger-beer  bottles  about,  but  the  old  Lee- 
Metford's  good  enough  for  me." 

No  need,  indeed,  to  look  as  far  away  as  France. 
London,  to  any  open  eye,  was  grotesque  with  a 
kind  of  fancy-dress  ball  of  non-combatant  khaki: 
it  seemed  as  if  no  well-to-do  person  could  be  an 
abstainer  from  warfare  too  total  to  go  about  dis- 
guised as  a  soldier.  He  might  be  anything — a 
lord  lieutenant,  an  honorary  colonel,  a  dealer  in 
horses,  a  valuer  of  cloth,  an  accountant,  an  actor  in 
full  work,  a  recruiter  of  other  men  for  the  battles 
that  he  avoided  himself,  a  "  soldier  politician  "  of 
swiftly  and  strangely  acquired  field  rank  and  the 

32 


MISGIVING 

"  swashing  and  martial  outside  "  of  a  Rosalind, 
and  a  Rosalind's  record  of  active  service.  No 
doubt  this  latter  carnival  was  not  to  be  at  its 
height  till  most  of  the  New  Army  of  19 14  was 
well  out  of  the  way.  Conscription  had  not  yet 
been  vouchsafed  to  the  prayers  of  healthy  young 
publicists  who  then  begged  themselves  off  before 
tribunals.  The  ultimate  farce  of  the  mobbing  of 
the  relatively  straight  "  conscientious  objector  " 
by  these,  his  less  conscientious  brother-objectors, 
had  still  to  be  staged.  But  already  the  comedy, 
like  Mercutio's  wound,  was  enough;  it  served. 
Colonel  Repington's  confessional  diary  had  not 
been  published,  but  the  underworld  which  it  re- 
veals was  pretty  correctly  guessed  by  the  New 
Army's  rising  suspicion.  And  rumour  said  that  all 
the  chief  tribes  of  posturers,  shirkers,  "  have-a- 
good-timers,"  and  jobbers  were  banding  them- 
selves together  against  the  one  man  in  high  place 
whom  the  New  Army  believed,  with  the  assurance 
of  absolute  faith,  to  be  straight  and  "  a  tryer."  It 
was  said  that  Kitchener  was  to  be  set  upon  soon  by 
a  league  of  all  the  sloths  whom  he  had  put  to 
work,  the  "  stunt  "  journalists  whom  he  had  kept 
at  a  distance,  the  social  principalities  and  powers 
whose  jobs  he  would  not  do.  All  the  slugs  of  the 
commonwealth  were  to  combine  against  the  com- 

33 


DISENCHANTMENT 

monwealth's  unpleasantly  dutiful  gardener — down 
with  his  lantern  and  can  of  caustic  solution! 


VI 

It  was,  of  course,  an  incomplete  view  of  the 
case.  Shall  we  have  Henries,  Fluellens,  and  Er- 
pinghams  at  the  hand  of  God,  and  no  Bardolphs, 
Pistols,  and  Nyms?  Our  stage  was  not  really  rot- 
ten by  any  means;  only  half-rotten,  like  others  of 
man's  institutions.  Half  the  Old  Army,  at  least, 
was  exemplary.  Even  among  politicians  unsel- 
fishness may,  with  some  trouble,  be  found.  Still, 
this  is  no  exposition  of  what  the  New  Army  ought 
to  have  said  to  itself  as  it  lay  on  the  ground  after 
Lights  Out  compounding  the  new  temper  which 
comes  out  to-day,  but  only  of  what  it  did  say.  It 
was  reacting.  In  the  first  weeks  of  the  war  most 
of  the  flock  had  too  simply  taken  on  trust  all  that 
its  pastors  and  masters  had  said.  Now,  after  be- 
lieving rather  too  much,  they  were  out  to  believe 
little  or  nothing — except  that  in  the  lump  pastors 
and  masters  were  frauds.  From  any  English 
training-camp,  about  that  time,  you  almost  seemed 
to  see  a  light  steam  rising,  as  it  does  from  a  damp 
horse.     This  was  illusion  beginning  to  evaporate. 


34 


CHAPTER     III 

AT   AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

I 

SHAKESPEARE  seems  to  have  known  what 
there  is  to  be  known  about  our  Great  War 
of  1914-18.  And  he  was  not  censored.  So 
he  put  into  his  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V  a  lot  of  lit- 
tle things  that  our  press  had  to  leave  out  at  the 
time  for  the  good  of  the  country.  If  you  look 
closely  you  can  see  them  lying  about  all  over  the 
plays.  There  is  the  ugly  affair  of  the  pyx,  at  Cor- 
bie, on  the  Somme;  there  are  the  little  irregulari- 
ties in  recruiting;  there  are  the  small  patches  of 
baddish  moral  on  the  coast  and  even  in  Picardy; 
there  is  the  painful  case  of  the  oldish  lieutenant 
who  drank  and  had  cold  feet,  after  talking  bigger 
than  anyone  else.  One  almost  expects  to  find 
something  in  Henry  V  about  the  mutiny  at  Eta- 
ples,  or  the  predilection  of  the  Australians  for 
chickens.  Anyhow,  there  is  a  more  understanding 
account  than  any  war  correspondent  has  given  of 
English  troops  about  to  go  into  battle. 

Timing  it  for  the  morning  of  Agincourt,  Shake- 
speare shows  us  three  standard  types  of  the  pri- 
vates who  were  to  win  the  Great  War.  One  of 
them,  Court,  says  little;  he  just  looks  out  for  the 
dawn.    We  all  know  Court;  he  has  won  many  bat- 


DISENCHANTMENT 

ties.  Bates,  the  second  man,  gives  tongue  pretty 
freely.  Bates  is  not  ruled  by  funk,  but  he  pro- 
fesses it. 

"  He  (the  King)  may  show  what  outward  courage  he 
will,  but  I  believe,  as  cold  a  night  as  'tis,  he  could  wish 
himself  in  the  Thames  up  to  the  neck,  and  so  I  would  he 
were,  and  I  by  him,  at  all  adventures,  so  we  were  quit 
here." 

Bates,  being  dead,  yet  liveth,  like  Court.  In 
1915,  as  in  1415,  he  was  prosecuting  his  conquests 
in  France,  and  his  unaltered  soul  was  fortifying  it- 
self with  chants  like 


Far,  far  away  would  I  be. 

Where  the  Alleyman  cannot  catch  me. 


and 


Oh  my!  I  don't  want  to  die, 
/  want  to  go  home, 

sung  to  dourly  wailful  tunes,  at  the  seasons  of 
stress  when  Scotsmen  and  Irishmen  screwed  them- 
selves up  to  the  sticking-point  with  their  Tyrtaean 
anti-English  ballads,  when  Frenchmen  would  soul- 
fully  hymn  Glory  and  Love,  and  when  Germans, 
if  the  ear  did  not  deceive,  were  calling  out  the 
whole  Landwehr  and  Landsturm  of  the  straight 
patriotic  lyre.  Williams,  the  third  of  the  Agin- 
court  privates,  lives  too.  He  lives  with  a  ven- 
geance.    You  will  remember  that  he  was  an  anti- 

2^ 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

ranter,  anti-canter  and  anti-gusher,  like  Bates. 
But  he  ran  a  special  line  of  his  own.  He  was  not 
simply  "  fed  up  " — as  he  would  say  now — with 
tall  talk  about  the  just  cause  and  brothers-in-arms 
and  the  moral  beauty  of  dying  in  battle.  He  was 
suspicious,  besides.  He  darkly  fancied  that  those 
who  emitted  the  stuff  must  have  some  crooked 
game  on.  "  That's  more  than  we  know  "  was  his 
stopper  for  all  stock  heroics.  He  would  take  none 
of  his  betters  on  trust,  neither  High  Command  nor 
Government  nor  Church — only  one  company  offi- 
cer whom  he  knew  for  himself — "  a  good  old  com- 
mander and  a  most  kind  gentleman."  This  one 
small  plot  of  dry  ground  was  reclaimed  from  the 
broad  sea  of  Williams'  scepticism. 

II 

If  this  Doubting  Thomas  abounded  at  Agin- 
court  how  could  he  not  abound  at,  say,  the  third 
Battle  of  Ypres?  At  Agincourt  our  whole  army 
was  just  small  enough  to  have  comradeship  all  the 
way  through  it — not  the  figure-of-speech  used  by 
the  orators,  but  the  thing  that  soldiers  know. 
Comradeship  in  a  battalion  will  come  of  itself; 
it  may  be  grown,  with  some  effort,  in  a  brigade; 
in  good  divisions  it  has  flickered  into  life  for  a 
while   during   a   war;   army  corps   know   it   not, 

37 


DISENCHANTMENT 

though  their  headquarters  staffs  may  dine  together 
at  times.  At  Agincourt  the  whole  of  our  force 
was  an  infantry  brigade  and  a  half.  It  all  lay 
handy  in  one  bivouac.  Generals  led  advancing 
troops  as  second-lieutenants  do  now.  The  com- 
mander-in-chief could  go  round  the  lines  of  a  night 
and  talk  to  the  men;  if  he  should  speak  to  them 
about  "  we  few,  we  happy  few,  we  band  of  broth- 
ers," he  would  not  be  projecting  gas. 

But  now ?     It  is  nobody's  fault,  but  all  of 

that  has  been  lost,  as  utterly  lost  as  the  old  com- 
radeship of  master  and  journeyman  worker  is  lost 
in  a  mill  where  half  the  thousand  hands  may  never 
have  seen  the  employer  who  sits  in  a  far-away  of- 
fice, perhaps  in  a  far-away  town.  Two  million 
men  can  never  be  a  happy  few;  nor  yet  a  band  of 
brothers — you  have  to  know  a  brother  first.  A 
man  could  serve  six  months  in  France  and  never 
see  the  general  commanding  his  division.  He 
could  be  there  for  four  years  and  not  know  what 
a  corps  or  an  army  commander  looked  like.  How 
can  you  help  it?  Many  generals  did  what  they 
could — more,  you  might  say,  than  they  should. 
They  left  their  desks  and  maps  to  visit  their  men 
in  the  line;  they  made  excuses  to  get  under  fire; 
two  or  three  were  killed  doing  so;  one  corps  com- 
mander smuggled  himself  into  the  front  line  of  an 

38 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

attack  by  his  corps.  But  these  were  escapades, 
strictly.  The  higher  commands  have  no  right  to 
get  hit.  Modern  war  has  pushed  the  right  place 
for  them  farther  and  farther  away  from  the  fight- 
ing, away  from  the  men,  whom  some  of  the  higher 
commanders,  as  well  as  the  lower,  do  really  love 
with  a  love  passing  the  love  of  women — "  the  dear 
men  "  of  whom  I  have  heard  an  officer,  tied  to  the 
staff  and  the  base  by  the  results  of  head  wounds, 
speak  with  an  almost  wailing  ache  of  desire,  as 
horses  whinny  for  a  friend — "  Would  I  were  with 
him,  wheresoe'er  he  is,  either  in  heaven  or  in  hell." 
But  how  were  the  men  to  know  that? 

Everything  helped  to  indispose  them  to  know 
it;  everything  went  to  point  the  contrast  between 
their  own  fate  and  that  of  its  distant  and  unknown 
controllers.  The  evolution  of  the  war  was  now 
calling  on  all  ranks  of  troops  in  the  actual  line 
to  put  up  with  a  much  diminished  chance  of  sur- 
vival, only  the  barest  off-chance  if  they  stayed 
there  year  after  year.  While  they  lived  it  was 
inflicting  upon  them  in  trenches  a  life  squalid  be- 
yond precedent.  And  that  same  evolution  had 
pressed  back  the  chief  seats  of  command  into 
places  where  life  was  said  to  contrast  itself  in 
wonderful  ways  with  that  life  of  mud  and  stench 
and  underground  gloom. 

39 


DISENCHANTMENT 

It  was  quite  truly  said.  Of  the  separation  and 
contrast  you  got  a  full  sense  if  fate  took  you 
straight  from  trench  life  in  the  stiff  Flanders  slime 
or  the  dreary  wet  chalk  of  the  disembowelled  Loos 
plain  to  one  of  the  seats  of  authority  far  in  the 
rear.  G.H.Q.,  the  most  regal  seat  of  them  all, 
was  divinely  niched,  during  most  of  the  war,  at 
Montreuil,  and  Montreuil  was  a  place  to  bring 
tears  to  the  eyes  of  an  artist,  like  Castelfranco,  St, 
Andrews,  or  Windsor;  the  tiny  walled  town  on  a 
hill  had  that  poignant  fulness  of  loveliness,  mak- 
ing the  sense  ache  at  it,  like  still  summer  evenings 
in  England.  It  was  a  storied  antique,  unscathed 
and  still  living  and  warm,  weathered  mellow  with 
centuries  of  sunshine  and  tranquillity,  all  its  own 
old  wars  long  laid  aside  and  the  racket  of  this  new 
one  very  far  from  it.  Walking  among  its  walled 
gardens,  where  roses  hung  over  the  walls,  or  sit- 
ting upon  the  edge  of  the  rampart,  your  feet  dan- 
gling over  among  the  top  boughs  of  embosoming 
trees,  you  were  not  merely  out  of  the  war;  you 
were  out  of  all  war  I  you  entered  into  that  beati- 
tude of  super-peace  which  fills  your  mind  as  you 
look  at  a  Roman  camp  on  a  sunned  Sussex  down, 
where  the  gentle  convexities  of  the  turf  seem  to 
turn  war  into  an  old  tale  for  children. 

Such  gardens  of  enchantment  were  not  known 
40 


AT   AGINCOURT   AND    YPRES 

by  sight  to  most  of  our  fighting  troops,  but  they 
were  rumoured.  The  mind  of  Williams,  in  the 
front  line,  worked  with  a  surly  zest  on  the  con- 
trast between  the  two  hemispheres  of  an  army — 
the  hemisphere  of  combatancy,  of  present  tor- 
ment, of  scant  reward,  of  probable  extinction,  and 
the  hemisphere  of  non-combatancy,  of  comfort,  of 
safety,  of  more  profuse  decoration,  the  second 
hemisphere  ruling  over  the  former  and  decimating 
it  sometimes  by  feats  like  the  Staff  work  of  19 15. 
Among  the  straw  in  billets  and  the  chalk  clods  in 
dug-outs,  in  the  reeking  hot  twilight  of  parlours 
in  French  village  inns,  in  the  confidential  darkness 
after  Lights  Out  in  hospital  wards  from  Bethune 
to  Versailles  and  Rouen,  the  vinegar  tongue  of 
Williams  let  itself  go. 

Of  course,  he  went  wrong.  And  yet  his  error, 
like  the  facts  which  begat  it,  could  not  be  helped. 
If  all  that  you  know  of  an  alleged  brother  of  yours 
is  that  he  is  having  the  best  of  the  deal  while  you 
are  getting  the  worst  you  have  to  be  a  saint  of 
the  prime  to  take  it  on  trust  that  it  really  did 
please  God,  or  any  godlike  human  authority,  to 
call  him  to  a  station  in  a  dry  hut  with  a  stove, 
among  the  flesh-pots  of  an  agreeable  coast,  and 
you  to  a  station  in  a  wet  burrow  full  of  rats  and 
lice  and  yellow  or  white  mud  and  ugly  liabilities. 

41 


DISENCHANTMENT 

And  Williams  was  not  a  saint,  although  when  he 
enlisted  he  was  profusely  told  that  he  was  by  peo- 
ple who  were  to  call  him  a  sinner  later,  when  as  a 
Dundee  rioter  or  "  Bolshevik  "  miner,  or  as  a 
Sinn  Feiner  or  a  Black-and-Tan,  he  transgressed 
some  eternal  law.  Williams  was  and  is  only  a 
quiet  simple  substance  exhibiting  certain  normal 
reactions  under  certain  chemical  tests. 

Ill 

There  may  be  laid  up  in  Heaven  a  pattern  of 
some  front  line  by  which  the  Staff  in  its  rear  would 
be  really  loved.  But  such  love  is  not  in  the  na- 
ture of  man.  If  the  skin  on  Mr.  Dempsey's 
knuckles  could  speak,  and  were  perfectly  frank, 
it  would  not  say  that  it  loved  the  unexposed  and 
unabraded  tissues  of  Mr.  Dempsey's  directive 
brain.  Hotspur,  in  deathless  words,  has  aired  the 
eternal  grudge  of  the  combatant  soldier  against 
the  Brass  Hat — 

I  remember,  when  the  fight  was  done, 
When  I  was  dry  with  rage  and  extreme  toil, 
Breathless  and  faint,  leaning  upon  my  sword, 
Came  there  a  certain  lord,  neat  and  trimly  dressed, 
Fresh  as  a  bridegroom. 

So  the  jaundiced  narrative  flows  on  and  on,  doing 
the  fullest  justice  on  record  to  some  of  the  main 

42 


AT   AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

heads  of  the  front  line's  immemorial  distaste  for 
the  Staff — for  its  too  Olympian  line  of  comment 
upon  the  vulgar  minutiae  of  combat,  its  offensively 
manifest  facilities  for  getting  a  good  shave,  its 
fertility  in  gratuitous  advice  of  an  imperfectly 
practical  kind,  and  its  occasional  lapses  from  grace 
in  spealcing  of  the  men,  the  beloved  men,  the  ob- 
jects of  every  good  combatant  officer's  jealous  and 
wrathful  affection. 

Or,  again,  you  might  say  that  a  Staff  is  a  trou- 
ser-button,  which  there  are  few  to  praise  while  it 
goes  on  with  its  work,  and  very  few  to  abstain 
from  cursing  when  it  comes  off.  When  a  Staff's 
work  is  done  well  the  front  line  only  feels  as  if 
Nature  were  marching,  without  actual  molesta- 
tion, along  some  beneficent  course  of  her  own.  But 
when  some  one  slips  up,  and  half  a  brigade  is  left 
to  itself  in  a  cold,  cold  world  encircled  by  Ger- 
mans, the  piercing  eye  of  the  front  line  perceives 
in  a  moment  how  pitifully  ill  the  Brass  Hats  de- 
serve of  their  country.  If  you  are  an  infantry- 
man the  Brass  Hats  above  you  are,  in  your  sight, 
a  kind  of  ex  officio  children  of  perdition,  like  your 
own  gunners.  As  long  as  your  own  gunners  go  on 
achieving  the  masterpiece  of  mathematics  that  is 
required  to  confine  the  incidence  of  their  shells  to 
the  enemy  you  feel  that,  just  for  the  moment,  a 

43 


DISENCHANTMENT 

gunner's  rich  natural  endowment  of  original  sin 
is  not  telling  for  all  it  is  worth.  But  some  day 
the  frailty  of  man  or  of  metal  causes  a  short  one 
to  drop  once  again  among  you  and  your  friends; 
and  then  you  are  mightily  refreshed  and  confirmed 
in  the  stern  Calvinistic  faith  of  the  infantry  that 
there  are  chosen  vessels  of  grace  and  also  chosen 
vessels  of  homicidal  mania. 

If  man,  in  all  his  wars,  is  predestined  never  to 
love  and  trust  his  Brass  Hats,  least  of  all  can  he 
struggle  against  this  disability  when  he  Is  warring 
intrenches.  Why?  Because  trench  life  is  very  do- 
mestic, highly  atomic.  Its  atom,  or  unit,  like  that 
of  slum  life,  is  the  jealously  close,  exclusive,  con- 
triving life  of  a  family  housed  in  an  urban  cellar. 
During  the  years  of  trench  war  a  man  seldom  saw 
the  whole  of  his  company  at  a  time.  Our  total 
host  might  be  two  millions  strong,  or  ten  millions; 
whatever  its  size  a  man's  world  was  that  of  his 
section — at  most,  his  platoon;  all  that  mattered 
much  to  him  was  the  one  little  boatload  of  cast- 
aways with  whom  he  was  marooned  on  a  desert 
island  and  making  shift  to  keep  off  the  weather 
and  any  sudden  attack  of  wild  beasts.  Absorbed 
in  the  primitive  job  of  keeping  alive  on  an  earth 
naked  except  in  the  matter  of  food,  they  became, 
like  other  primitive  men,  family  separatists.    Any 

44 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

odd  chattel  that  each  trench  household  acquired 
served  as  an  extra  dab  of  cement  for  the  house- 
hold's internal  affections,  as  well  as  a  possible 
casus  belli  against  the  unblessed  outsiders  who 
dared  to  cast  upon  it  the  eye  of  desire.  A  brazier 
with  three  equal  legs  would  be  coveted  by  a  whole 
company.  Once  a  platoon  acquired  a  brolcen,  but 
just  practicable,  arm-chair;  not  exactly  a  strong- 
hold of  luxury;  rather  a  freakish  wave  of  her  ban- 
ner; and  this  symbol  of  lost  joys  was  borne,  at 
great  inconvenience,  from  sector  to  sector  of  the 
front,  amidst  the  affected  derision  of  other  pla- 
toons— veiling  what  was  well  understood  to  be 
envy.  It  was  like  the  grim,  ineffusive  spiritual  co- 
hesion of  a  Scottish  family  soldered  together  to 
keep  out  the  world. 

Constantly  jammed  up  against  one  another, 
every  man  in  each  of  these  isolated  knots  of  ad- 
venturers came  to  be  seen  by  the  rest  for  what  he 
was  worth,  with  the  drastic  clearness  of  open-eyed 
husbands  and  wives  of  long  standing.  They  had 
domesticated  the  Day  of  Judgment.  Many  old 
valuations  had  to  go  by  the  board;  some  great 
home  reputations  wilted  surprisingly;  stones  that 
the  builders  of  public  opinion  on  Salisbury  Plain 
had  confidently  rejected  found  their  way  up  to  the 
heads  of  corners.     Officers,  watched  almost  as 

45 


DISENCHANTMENT 

closely,  were  sorted  out  by  the  minds  of  the  men 
into  themes  for  contemptuous  silence,  objects  of 
the  love  that  doeth  and  beareth  all  things,  and 
cases  of  Not  Proven  Yet.  The  cutting  equity  of 
this  family  council  was  bracing.  It  got  the  best 
out  of  everybody  in  whom  there  was  anything. 
Imagine  a  similar  overhauling  of  public  life  here! 
And  the  size  of  the  scrap-heap!  But  to  the  outer 
world,  which  it  did  not  half  know,  the  tribunal 
was  harsh,  and  harshest  of  all  to  the  outer  and 
upper  world  of  army  principalities  and  powers. 

These  were,  to  it,  the  untested,  unsifted,  "  the 
crowd  that  was  never  put  through  it."  There 
were  presumptions  against  them,  besides.  They 
were  akin,  in  the  combatant's  sight,  to  the  elfish 
gods  that  had  ruled  and  bedevilled  his  training  at 
home.  They  were  of  the  breed  of  the  wasters,  the 
misorganizers,  the  beauties  who  sent  his  battahon 
out  from  the  Wiltshire  downs  to  Bruay  along  a 
course  of  gigantic  zigzags,  like  a  yacht  beating  up 
in  the  teeth  of  a  wind,  first  running  far  south  to 
Havre,  then  north  to  near  the  German  Ocean,  and 
then  going  about  and  opening  out  again  upon  the 
southward  tack  until  Bruay  was  struck;  for  it  was, 
indeed,  along  a  trajectory  somewhat  like  that  of 
an  actual  flash  of  lightning  in  some  quaint  engrav- 
ing that  Britain  hurled  at  the  enemy  many  of  her 

46 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

new  thunderbolts  of  war.  Also,  they  stood  In 
the  shoes  of  the  men  who  in  French's  day  had  sent 
platoon  commanders  to  take  woods  and  quarries 
not  marked  on  their  maps.  And  they  were  the 
men  who,  when  troops  had  been  marching  twelve 
miles  in  full  kit  on  the  high-cambered,  heavily 
greased  Flanders  setts  in  the  rain,  would  appear 
on  the  roadside  turf  round  a  blind  corner,  sitting 
chubby  and  sleek  on  fresh  horses,  and  say  that  the 
marching  was  damned  bad  and  troops  must  go 
back  to-morrow  and  do  it  again.  But  the  chief 
count  was  the  first — that  they  had  not  all  gone 
through  the  mill;  that  they  lived  in  a  world  in 
which  all  the  respectable  old  bubbles,  pricked  else- 
where, were  still  fat  and  shining,  where  all  the  old 
bluffs  were  uncalled  and  still  going  strong,  and 
the  wangler  could  still  inherit  the  earth  and  eye- 
wash reign  happy  and  glorious. 

Not  a  judgment  wholly  just.  But  not  one  con- 
temptible either;  for,  wherever  it  ended,  it  set  out 
from  the  right  idea  of  judging  a  man  only  by 
what  he  was  worth  and  what  he  could  do.  And, 
just  or  not,  it  was  real;  it  influenced  men's  acts, 
not  to  the  extent  of  losing  us  the  war,  but  to  that 
of  helping  to  send  the  winners  home  possessed 
with  that  contemptuous  impatience  of  authority 
which  has  already  thrown  out  of  gear  so  much 

47 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  the  pre-war  machinery  for  regulating  the  joint 
action  of  mankind. 

IV 

There  was  yet  another  special  check  during  the 
war  upon  love  and  respect  for  the  higher  com- 
mands. There  were  so  many  things  of  moment 
which  they  were  the  last  to  find  out.  Time  after 
time  the  great  ones  of  this  world  were  seen  to  be 
walking  in  darkness  long  after  the  lowly  had  seen 
a  great  light.  While  the  appointed  brains  of  our 
army  were  still  swearing  hard  by  the  rifle,  and 
nothing  but  it,  as  the  infantry's  friend,  a  more  sav- 
ing truth  had  entered  in  at  the  lowly  door  of  the 
infantry's  mind.  Ignoring  all  that  at  Aldershot 
they  had  learnt  to  be  sacred,  they  contumaciously 
saw  that  so  long  as  you  stand  in  a  hole  deeper  than 
you  are  tall  y6u  never  will  hit  with  a  rifle-bullet 
another  man  standing  in  just  such  another  hole 
twenty  yards  off.  But  also — divine  idea! — that 
you  can  throw  a  tin  can  from  your  hole  into  his. 

In  England  the  mighty  had  taken  a  great  deal 
of  pains  to  teach  the  New  Army  always  to  parry 
the  thrust  of  its  enemy's  bayonet  first,  and  only 
then  to  get  in  its  own.  A  fine,  stately  procedure  it 
was  when  taught  by  an  exemplary  Regular  Army 
instructor  fully  resolved  that,   whatever  Shelley 

48 


AT   AGINCOURT   AND    YPRES 

may  say,  no  part  of  any  movement  must  mingle  in 
any  other  part's  being.  In  France,  and  no  doubt 
on  other  fronts  too,  it  abruptly  dawned  on  those 
whose  style  this  formalist  had  moulded,  more  or 
less,  that  a  second  German  or  Turk  was  apt  to  cut 
In  before  the  appointed  ritual  of  debate  with  the 
first  could  be  carried  to  a  happy  end.  Illicit 
abridgements  followed,  attended  by  contumacious 
reflections. 

Whatever,  again,  was  august  in  Canadian  life 
and  affairs  was  bent  in  19 14  upon  arming  Cana- 
dian troops  with  what  was  indeed,  by  a  long  chalk, 
the  pick  of  all  match-shooting  rifles.  It  was  the 
last  word  of  man  in  his  struggle  against  the  ca- 
prices of  barometric  and  thermometric  pressures 
on  ranges.  And  it  was  to  show  a  purblind  Europe, 
among  other  things,  that  Sam  Hughes  was  the 
man  and  that  wisdom  would  die  with  him.  Yet 
hardly  had  its  use,  in  wrath,  begun  when  there 
broke  upon  the  untutored  Canadian  foot-soldier  a 
revelation  withheld  from  the  Hugheses  of  this 
world.  He  perceived  that  the  enemy,  in  his  per- 
versity, did  not  intend  to  stand  up  on  a  skyline  a 
thousand  yards  off  to  be  shot  with  all  the  refine- 
ments of  science;  point-blank  was  going  to  be  the 
only  range,  except  for  a  few  specialists;  rapidity 
of  fire  would  matter  more  than  precision;  and  all 

49 


DISENCHANTMENT 

the  super-subtle  appliances  tending  to  triumphs  at 
Bisley  would  here  be  no  better  than  aids  to  the 
picking  of  mud  from  trench  walls  as  the  slung  rifle 
joggled  against  them. 

The  great  did  not  turn  these  truths  of  mean  ori- 
gin right  away  from  the  door.  They  would  quite 
often  take  a  discovery  in.  Only  there  was  no  run- 
ning to  greet  it. 

There  was  no  hurrj^  in  their  hands, 
No  hurrj^  in  their  feet. 

Like  smells  that  originate  in  the  kitchen  and  work 
their  way  up  by  degrees  to  the  best  bedroom  the 
new  revelations  of  war  ascended  slowly  from  floor 
to  floor  of  the  hierarchy.  They  did  arrive  in  the 
end.  The  Canadians  got,  in  the  end,  a  rifle  not 
too  great  and  good  for  business.  By  the  third 
year  of  the  war  the  infantry  schools  at  the  base 
were  teaching  drafts  from  home  to  use  the  bayo- 
net as  troops  in  the  line  had  taught  themselves  to 
use  it  in  the  second.  The  frowning  down  of  the 
tanks  can  hardly  have  lasted  a  year.  The  Stokes 
gun  was  not  blackballed  for  good.  It  was  not  for 
all  time,  but  only  for  what  seemed  to  them  like  an 
age,  that  our  troops  had  to  keep  off  the  well-found 
enemy  bomber  with  bombs  that  they  made  of  old 
jam   tins,   wire,   a   little  gun-cotton,   a   little   time 

SO 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

fuse,  and  some  bits  of  sharp  stone,  old  iron,  or 
anything  hard  that  was  lying  about,  with  earth  to 
fill  in;  the  higher  powers  did  the  thing  well  in  the 
end;  they  came  down  handsomely  at  last;  in  the 
next  life  the  Mills  bomb  alone  should  be  good  for 
at  least  a  night  out  once  a  year  on  an  iceberg  to 
some  War  Office  brave  who  would  not  see  it  killed 
in  the  cradle. 

And  yet  authority  wore,  in  the  eyes  of  its  troops 
in  the  field,  an  inexpert  air — sublime,  benevolent, 
but  somehow  inexpert.  They  had  begun  to  notice 
it  even  before  leaving  England.  Imagine  the 
headquarters  Staff  of  a  district  command  watching 
a  test  for  battalion  bombing  officers  and  sergeants 
at  the  close  of  a  divisional  bombing  course  in 
19 1 5  :  the  instructor  in  charge  a  quick-witted 
Regular  N.C.O.  who  has  shone  at  Loos  and  is  now 
decorated,  commissioned,  slightly  shell-shocked, 
and  sent  home  to  teach,  full  of  the  new  craft  and 
subtlety  of  trench  war;  the  pupils  all  picked  for  the 
job  and  devouringly  keen,  half  of  them  old  crick- 
eters, all  able-bodied,  and  all  now  able,  after  hard 
practice  during  the  course,  to  drop  a  bomb  on  to 
any  desired  square  yard  within  thirty-five  yards 
of  their  stance  ;  and  then  the  Staff,  tropically  daz- 
zling in  their  red  and  gold,  august  beyond  words, 
but  genial,  benign,  encouraging,  only  too  ready  to 

SI 


DISENCHANTMENT 

praise  things  that  they  would  see  to  be  easy  if  only 
they  knew  more  about  them  and  were  not  like  mid- 
dle-aged mothers  watching  their  offspring  at  foot- 
ball— so  a  profane  bombing  sergeant  describes 
them  that  night  to  his  mess. 

V 

"  Your  Old  Army's  all  bloody  born  amatoors," 
an  Australian  of  ripe  war  experience  remarked 
with  some  frankness  in  France.  His  immediate 
occasion  for  generalizing  so  rashly  was  some- 
body's slip  in  passing  certain  grenades  as  good  for 
field  use.  Most  of  our  hand  and  rifle  grenades 
undoubtedly  were.  If  anything  they  were  too  fine 
for  it,  too  fit  to  beautify  drawing-rooms  as  well. 
One  objet  d'art,  a  delight  to  the  eye,  was  said  to 
cost  its  country  one  pound  five  as  against  the  two 
francs  for  which  France  was  composing  an  angel 
of  death  less  pretty  but  equally  virtuous.  Still, 
ours  would  kill,  if  you  had  the  heart  to  break  up 
an  object  so  fair.  But  the  batch  that  made  the 
Australian  blaspheme,  though  good  in  design,  were 
mismade.  They  were  made  as  if  the  people  who 
made  them  had  not  guessed  what  they  were  for. 

As  you  know,  the  outside  of  most  kinds  of  gre- 
nade is  a  thick  metal  case  serrated  with  deeply-cut 
lines  that  cross  each  other  like  those  more  shallow 

52 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

sunk  lines  on  crocodile-leather,  only  at  right  an- 
gles. These  lines  of  weakness,  cut  into  the  metal, 
mark  out  almost  the  whole  of  the  case  into  little 
squares  standing  up  in  relief,  sixteen  or  thirty-two 
or  forty-eight  or  seventy-two  according  to  type. 
The  burst,  if  all  goes  well,  attacks  the  lines  of 
weakness,  cuts  them  right  through,  and  so  dis- 
perses all  the  little  squares  of  brass,  cast-iron,  or 
steel  radially  as  flying  bits  of  shrapnel.  What  led 
the  Australian  to  sin  was  that  this  batch  had  come 
out  to  France  with  their  lines  of  weakness  cut  not 
half  as  deep  as  they  should  be.  The  burst  only 
ripped  the  case  open  without  breaking  it  up.  It 
had  been  lovely  in  life,  and  in  death  it  was  not  di- 
vided. It  just  gave  a  jump,  the  length  of  a  frog's, 
and  presented  the  foe  with  a  cheap  good  souvenir, 
reassuring  besides. 

There  must  have  been  a  good  many  thousands 
of  these.  They  may  have  done  good — perhaps 
won  a  good-conduct  mark  to  some  War  Office  hero 
for  rushing  them  out  in  good  time  to  the  front; 
perhaps  assisted  some  politician  to  feel  that  he 
was  riding  a  whirlwind  and  directing  a  storm, 
solving  munition  crises  and  winning  the  war.  All 
human  happiness  counts.  In  France,  if  the  phys- 
ical effects  of   their  detonation  were  poor,   the 

53 


DISENCHANTMENT 

moral  reverberations  which  followed  were  lively. 
A  bombing  sergeant,  sent  down  the  line  for  a  rest 
and  instructing  new  drafts  in  a  hollow  among  the 
sand  dunes  at  Etaples  well  out  of  authority's  hear- 
ing, would  start  his  lecture  by  holding  one  of  them 
up  and  saying:  "  This  'ere,  men,  is  a  damn  bad 
grenade.  But  it's  all  that  the  bloody  tailors  give 
you  to  work  with.  So  just  pay  attention  to  me." 
And  then  he  would  go  on  to  pour  out  his  cornu- 
copia of  tips,  fruits  of  empiric  research,  for  do- 
ing what  somebody's  slackness  or  folly  had  made 
it  so  much  less  easy  to  do. 

VI 

Whenever  you  passed  from  east  to  west  across 
the  British  zone  during  the  war  you  would  find 
somebody  saying  with  fervour  that  somebody  else, 
a  little  more  to  the  west  and  a  little  higher  in 
rank,  had  not  even  learnt  his  job  well  enough  to 
keep  out  of  the  way.  Subalterns,  who  by  some 
odd  arrangement  of  flukes  had  come  through 
our  attacks  on  the  Somme  in  191 6  and  in  Artois 
and  Flanders  next  year,  would  hoot  at  the  notion 
— it  had  a  vogue  with  part  of  the  Staff  in  a  tran- 
quil far  west — that  the  way  to  get  on  with  the  war 
was  to  raise  a  more  specific  thirst  for  blood  in  the 

54 


AT   AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

private.  Battalion  commanders  did  not  soon  tire 
of  telling  how  in  the  busiest  days  of  big  battles  the 
unseen  powers  would  pester  them  for  instant  re- 
turns of  the  number  of  shovels  they  had,  or  of  the 
number  of  men  who  in  civil  life  had  been  fitters,  or 
had  been  moulders.  Brigadiers  would  savagely 
wonder  aloud  whether  it  ever  occurred  to  a  higher 
command  that  to  make  little  attack  after  little  at- 
tack, each  on  a  narrow,  one-brigade  front,  was 
merely  to  ask  to  have  each  attack  squashed  flat 
in  its  turn  by  a  fan-like  convergence  of  fire  from 
the  enemy's  guns  on  both  flanks,  not  to  speak  of 
supports.  The  day  the  bad  turn  came  for  us,  in 
the  two-chaptered  battle  of  Cambrai,  an  oflScer 
on  the  Staff  of  one  of  the  worst-hit  divisions  ob- 
served :  "  Our  attitude  is  just  '  we  told  you  so  '." 
When  the  good  turn  in  the  war  had  come  the  next 
summer  there  was  a  day,  not  so  good  as  the  rest, 
when  two  squadrons  of  horse  were  sent  to  charge, 
in  column,  up  a  straight,  treeless  rising  road  for 
half  a  mile  and  take  a  little  wood  at  the  top. 
There  were  many  machine-guns  in  the  wood — how 
could  there  not  have  been? — and  the  whole  air 
sang  with  warnings  of  that.  No  horse  or  man 
either  got  to  the  wood  or  came  back.  They  were 
all  in  a  few  seconds  lying  in  the  white  dust,  almost 

55 


DISENCHANTMENT 

in  the  order  they  rode  in,  the  officer  in  command 
a  little  ahead  of  the  rest.  It  looked,  in  its  formal 
completeness,  like  a  thing  acted,  a  cinema  play 
showing  a  part  of  Sennacherib's  army  on  which 
the  angel  had  breathed.  On  the  road  back  from 
the  place  I  met  a  corps  commander — a  great  man 
at  his  work.  When  he  heard  his  face  crumpled  up 
for  a  moment — he  was  a  soft-hearted  man.  "  An- 
other of  those  damned  cavalry  f oUies  1  "  he 
growled.  His  voice  had  the  scorn  that  the  man 
who  is  versed  in  to-day's  practice  feels  for  the  men 
who  still  move  among  yesterday's  theories.  So  it 
was,  from  east  to  west,  all  the  way. 

All  the  wise  men  were  not  in  the  east.  It  was 
the  fault  of  the  war,  the  outlandish,  innovatory 
war  that  did  not  conform  to  the  proper  text-books 
as  it  ought  to  have  done;  an  unimagined  war  of 
flankless  armies  scratching  each  other's  faces 
across  an  endless  thorn  hedge,  not  dreamt  of  in 
Staff  College  philosophy;  a  war  that  was  always 
putting  out  of  date  the  best  that  had  been  known 
and  thought  and  invented,  always  sending  every- 
one to  school  again;  unkind,  above  all,  to  us  who, 
if  well-to-do,  bring  up  our  young  to  have  a  proper 
respect  for  the  past  and  to  feel  that  if  yesterday's 
parasol  will  not  keep  out  the  rain  of  to-day,  then  it 
ought  to,  and  no  one  can  blame  them  for  using  it. 

56 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

VII 

Yet  the  men  in  the  line  talked,  and  so  did  the 
subalterns,  most  of  whom  had  been  in  the  ranks, 
now  that  the  war  ran  into  years.  Soldiers  have 
endless  occasions  for  talk.  Being  seldom  alone, 
and  having  to  hold  their  tongues  sometimes,  they 
talk  all  the  time  that  they  can.  And  most  of  their 
talk  was  sour  and  scornful.  Ever  since  their  en- 
listment there  had  been  running  down  in  them  one 
of  the  springs  of  health  in  the  life  of  a  country. 
An  unprecedented  number  of  the  most  healthy, 
high-spirited,  and  nationally  valuable  Englishmen 
in  the  prime  of  life  were  telling  one  another  that, 
among  those  whom  they  had  hitherto  taken  more 
or  less  completely  on  trust  as  their  "  betters," 
things  were  going  on  which  must  make  the  war 
harder  for  us  to  win;  while  they,  the  common 
people,  cared  with  all  their  hearts  about  saving 
Belgium  and  France,  those  betters,  so  placed  that 
they  could  do  more  to  that  end  if  they  would, 
seemed  to  be  caring,  on  the  whole,  less — shouting 
and  gesticulating  enough,  but  ready  to  give  up  less 
of  what  was  pleasant  and  to  do  less  of  what  was 
hard,  and  perhaps  not  able  to  do  much  at  their 
best.  Colonel  Repington's  friends,  with  their 
scented  baths,  their  prime  vintages,  and  their  mu- 

57 


DISENCHANTMENT 

tinous  chatter,  were  not  actually  seen;  but  there 
was  a  bad  smell  about;  the  air  stank  of  bad  work 
In  high  places. 

Most  of  our  N.C.O.'s  and  men  in  the  field  had 
come  to  feel  that  it  was  left  to  them  and  to  the 
soundest  regimental  officers  to  pull  the  foundered 
rulers  of  England  and  heads  of  the  army  through 
the  scrape.  They  assumed  now  that  while  they 
were  doing  this  job  they  must  expect  to  be  crawled 
upon  by  all  the  vermin  bred  in  the  dark  places  of  a 
rich  country  vulgarly  governed.  They  were  well 
on  their  guard  by  this  time  against  expressing  any 
thoroughgoing  faith  in  anything  or  anybody,  or 
incurring  any  suspicion  of  dreaming  that  such  a 
faith  was  likely  to  animate  others  ;  a  man  was  a 
fool  if  he  imagined  that  anyone  set  over  him  was 
not  looking  after  number  one  ;  the  patriotism  of 
the  press  was  bunkum,  screening  all  sorts  of  queer 
games;  the  eloquence  of  patriotic  orators  was  just 
a  smoke  barrage  to  cover  their  little  manoeuvres 
against  one  another;  the  red  tabs  of  the  Staff  were 
the  "  Red  Badge  of  Funk  ";  a  hospital  ward  full 
of  sick  men  would  exchange,  when  left  to  them- 
selves, vitriolic  surmises  about  the  extravagant 
pay  that  the  nurses  were  probably  getting,  and  go 
on  to  suggest  what  vast  profits  the  Y.M.C.A.  must 
be  making  out  of  its  huts.     Wherever  the  con- 

58 


AT    AGINCOURT    AND    YPRES 

trary  had  not  been  proved  to  their  own  senses,  the 
slacking,  self-seeking  and  shirking  that  had  mud- 
dled and  spoilt  their  own  training  for  war  until 
they  were  put,  half-trained,  in  the  hottest  of  the 
fire  must  be  assumed  to  be  in  authority  every- 
where. 

Long  ago,  perhaps,  the  commons  of  England 
may,  on  the  whole,  have  accepted  the  view  that 
while  they  were  the  fists  of  her  army  there  was 
a  strong  brain  somewhere  behind,  as  good  at  its 
job  as  the  fists  were  at  theirs;  that  above  them, 
using  them  for  the  best,  mind  was  enthroned, 
mind  the  deviser,  adapter,  foreseer,  the  finder  of 
ever  new  means  to  new  ends,  mind  which  knew 
better  than  fists,  and  from  which,  in  any  time  of 
trial,  all  good  counsels  and  provident  works  were 
sure  to  proceed.  If  so,  the  faith  of  the  general 
mass  of  the  English  common  people  in  any  such 
division  of  functions  was  now  pretty  near  its  last 
kick.  The  lions  felt  they  had  found  out  the  asses. 
They  would  not  try  to  throw  off  the  lead  of  the 
asses  just  then  :  you  cannot  reorganize  a  fire-bri- 
gade in  the  midst  of  a  fire.  That  had  to  wait. 
They  worked  grimly  on  at  the  job  of  the  moment, 
resigned  for  the  present  to  seeing  all  the  things  go 
ill  which  the  great  ones  of  their  world  ought  to 
have  caused  to  go  well.     For  themselves,  in  each 

59 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  their  units,  they  saw  what  was  coming.  Some 
day  soon  they  would  be  put  into  an  attack  and 
would  come  out  with  half  their  numbers  or,  per- 
haps, two-thirds,  and  nothing  gained  for  England, 
perhaps  because  some  old  Regular  in  his  youth 
had  preferred  playing  polo  to  learning  his  job. 
The  rest  would  be  brought  up  to  strength  with 
half-trained  drafts  and  then  put  in  again,  and 
the  process  would  go  on  over  and  over  again  until 
our  commanders  learnt  war,  and  then  perhaps  we 
might  win,  if  any  of  us  were  left. 

While  so  many  things  were  shaken  one  thing 
that  held  fast  was  the  men's  will  to  win.  It  may 
have  changed  from  the  first  lyric-hearted  enthu- 
siasm. But  it  was  a  dour  and  inveterate  will.  At 
the  worst  most  of  the  men  fully  meant  to  go  down 
killing  for  all  they  were  worth.  And  there  was 
just  a  hope  that  in  Germany,  too,  such  default  as 
they  saw  on  our  side  was  the  rule ;  it  was,  perhaps, 
a  disease  of  all  armies  and  countries,  not  of  ours 
alone;  there  might  thus  be  a  chance  for  us  still. 
On  that  chance  they  still  worked  away  with  a  sul- 
len ardour  that  no  muddling  or  sloth  in  high  places 
could  wholly  damp  down.  Many  of  them  were 
like  children  clinging  with  a  cross  crankiness  to  a 
hobby  of  learning  to  read  in  a  school  where  some 
of  the  teachers  were  good,  but  some  could  not 

60 


AT   AGINCOURT   AND    YPRES 

read  themselves,  and  others  could  read  but  pre- 
ferred other  occupations  to  teaching. 

All  were  so  deeply  absorbed  in  winning  that  no 
practical  upshot  of  all  their  new  thoughts  about 
England's  diseases  was  yet,  as  far  as  I  could  per- 
ceive, taking  shape  in  their  minds.  On  that  side 
their  mood  was  merely  one  of  postponement, 
somewhat  menacing  in  its  form,  but  still  postpone- 
ment.    "  We've  ^0/ to  win  first.    Then ?   But 

we've  got  to  win  first."  They  were  almost  ex- 
actly the  words  in  which  most  German  prisoners, 
till  19 1 8,  expressed  their  own  feeling  about  the 
old  rulers  of  Germany. 


61 


CHAPTER     IV 

TEDIUM 

I 

A  BOOK  may  be  bad  and  yet  tell  you  much. 
Lately  I  came  across  such  a  book.  It  i> 
surely  one  of  the  crossest  books  ever  writ- 
ten. Its  author  fought  in  France,  in  the  ranks, 
for  a  good  many  months  of  the  war.  He  must 
have  been  one  of  the  men  who  make  sergeants 
grey — a  "  proper  lawyer,"  as  Regulars  call  the 
type  which  a  cotton  district  labels  as  "  self-acting 
mules." 

I  seem  to  know  that  man.  He  was  a  volunteer, 
but  he  would  not  enlist  until  conscription  came  in, 
because  of  some  precious  doctrine  he  had  about 
younger  men  without  families.  When  he  did  join 
his  first  act  was  to  ask  to  speak  to  the  colonel. 
He  was  aggrieved  because  army  doctors  would  not 
act,  when  he  desired  it,  except  as  such.  When 
anyone  checked  him  he  felt  an  ardent  thirst  to 
"  explain,"  and  the  explanation  was  always  that 
he  who  had  checked  was  wrong.  In  the  field  he 
kept  a  diary  and  sternly  would  he  note  on  its  re- 
cording page  that  tea  one  day — nay,  on  more  than 
one — was  served  "very  late  indeed."  Heinous! 
The  continued  existence  of  war  is  precarious. 
More  than  the  League  of  Nations  menaces  its  fu- 

62 


TEDIUM 

ture.  For  it  depends,  at  the  last,  on  the  infre- 
quency  of  "  proper  lawyers."  Armies  can  now 
be  made,  and  moved  about  when  made,  only  be- 
cause the  plain  man  who  keeps  the  world  going 
round  does  not  stick  up  for  the  last  ounce  of  his 
rights,  or  stick  out  for  the  joys  of  having  the  last 
word,  so  dourly  as  these.  Even  to  keep  up  a  game 
with  so  modest  an  element  of  voluntaryism  about 
it  as  penal  justice  you  have  to  have  some  little  ef- 
fort of  co-operation  all  round.  If  your  convicts 
will  not  even  eat  the  whole  thing  begins  crumbling. 
The  "  suffragettes  "  showed  us  that.  A  pioneer 
still  earlier,  an  Indian  coolie,  proved  it  in  a  Fi- 
jian gaol.  Were  every  soldier  like  this  diarist 
war  would  have  to  be  dropped,  not  because  men 
were  too  good,  but  because  they  were  too  prickly. 

II 

And  yet  the  book  told  something  which  no  other 
book  has  yet  succeeded  in  telling  you.  Wordy, 
cantankerous,  dull,  repeating  itself  like  a  decimal, 
padded  with  cheap  political  "  thoughts  "  gathered 
from  old  "  stunts  "  in  bad  papers — still,  it  came 
nearer  than  any  other  to  showing  you  the  way 
trench  warfare  struck  a  mind  and  soul  quite  com- 
monplace in  everything  except  a  double  dose  of 
native  sourness.     Here  was  nothing  of  M.  Bar- 

63 


DISENCHANTMENT 

busse's  doctrinaire  fire  to  make  the  author  pervert 
or  exaggerate.  No  thrill  of  drastic  passion,  not 
even  the  passionate  self-pity  of  Dickens  describing 
his  childhood  as  Copperfield's,  stirred  the  plod- 
ding and  crabbed  narrative.  The  writer  seemed 
too  peevish  to  be  at  the  pains  to  beautify  or  exalt. 
And  so  his  account  of  the  bungled  attack  in  which 
he  took  part  is  extraordinarily  true  to  all  that  the 
commonplace  man  found  to  be  left  in  almost  any 
attack  when  once  all  the  picturesque  fluff  filling  the 
current  literary  pictures  of  it  were  found  not  to 
be  there — the  touch  of  bathos;  the  supposed  he- 
roic moment  only  seeming  a  bit  of  a  "  dud,"  a  mis- 
carriage; the  hugger-mugger  element  of  confu- 
sion; the  baffling  way  that  the  real  thing  did  not  so 
often  give  men  obvious  gallant  things  to  do  as  irri- 
tating puzzles  to  solve,  muddles  to  liquidate  at 
short  notice;  the  queer  flashes  of  revelation,  in 
contact  with  individual  enemies,  of  the  bottom- 
less falsity  of  the  cheaper  kind  of  current  war  psy- 
chology. 

Advances,  however,  were  far  from  being  the 
staple  of  warfare.  They  caused  the  most  losses, 
but  still  they  did  less  than  the  years  of  less  sensa- 
tional routine  to  make  what  changes  were  made 
by  the  war  in  the  minds  of  the  men  in  the  ranks. 
And  here  our  pettish  author  found  the  congenial 

64 


TEDIUM 

theme  for  his  own  acrid,  accurate  method.  His 
trivial  reiterations  succeed,  in  the  end,  in  piling  up 
in  the  reader's  mind  an  image  of  that  old  trench 
life  as  the  sum  of  innumerable  dreary  units  of  irk- 
some fatigue.  This  was  the  normal  life  of  the 
infantry  private  in  France.  For  N.C.O.'s  it  was 
lightened  by  the  immunity  of  their  rank  from  fa- 
tigue work  in  the  technical  sense.  For  the  officer 
it  was  much  further  lightened  by  better  quarters 
and  the  servant  system.  For  most  of  his  time  the 
average  private  was  tired.  Fairly  often  he  was 
so  tired  as  no  man  at  home  ever  is  in  the  common 
run  of  his  work. 

If  a  company's  trench  strength  was  low  and  sen- 
try-posts abounded  more  than  usual  in  its  sector  a 
man  might,  for  eight  days  running,  get  no  more 
than  one  hour  off  duty  at  any  one  time,  day  or 
night.  If  enemy  guns  were  active  many  of  these 
hours  off  guard  duty  might  have  to  be  spent  on 
trench  repair.  After  one  of  these  bad  times  in 
trenches  a  company  or  platoon  would  sometimes 
come  out  on  to  the  road  behind  the  communica- 
tion trench  like  a  flock  of  over-driven  sheep.  The 
weakest  ones  would  fall  out  and  drop  here  and 
there  along  the  road,  not  as  a  rule  fainting,  but  in 
the  state  of  a  horse  dead-beat,  to  whom  any 
amount  of  thrashing  seems  preferable   to  going 

6S 


DISENCHANTMENT 

on.  Men  would  come  out  light-headed  with  fa- 
tigue, and  ramble  away  to  the  men  next  them 
about  some  great  time  which  they  had  had,  or 
meant  to  have,  at  home.  Or  a  man  would  march 
all  right  till  the  road  fetched  a  bend,  and  then 
he  would  march  straight  on  into  the  ditch  in  his 
sleep.  Upon  a  greasy  road  with  a  heavy  camber 
I  have  seen  a  used-up  man  get  the  illusion,  on  a 
night-march  back  to  billets,  that  he  was  walking 
on  a  round,  smooth,  horizontal  pole  or  convex 
plank  above  some  fearsome  sort  of  gulf.  He 
would  struggle  hard  to  recover  imaginary  losses 
of  footing,  pant  and  sweat  and  scrape  desperately 
sideways  with  his  feet  like  a  frightened  young 
horse  new  to  harness  when  it  leans  in  against  the 
pole,  with  its  feet  skidding  outwards  on  the  setts. 
Down  he  would  go,  time  after  time,  in  the  mud, 
each  time  as  unable  to  rise  of  himself,  under  the 
weight  of  his  pack  and  equipment,  as  any  mediae- 
val knight  unhorsed  and  held  down  by  the  weight 
of  his  armour.  Hauled  up  again  to  his  feet,  to 
be  driven  along  like  one  of  the  spent  cab-horses  in 
Naples  just  strong  enough  to  move  when  up,  but 
not  to  rise,  he  would  in  another  five  minutes  be 
agonizing  again  on  the  greasy  pole  of  his  delirium. 
The  querulist  of  the  book  took  it  hard,  I  re- 
member, that  more  kind  words  did  not  come  to  the 

66 


TEDIUM 

men.  He  saw  his  own  lot  very  clearly,  but  not  so 
clearly  the  lot  of  those  other  unfortunates  who 
had  to  put  the  job  through.  A  man  who  finds  him- 
self in  charge  of  a  spent  horse  at  night,  in  a  place 
where  there  may  be  no  safe  waiting  till  dawn, 
must  do  something.  Ten  to  one  he  will  flog  or 
kick  the  horse  into  moving.  He  may  feel  that  he, 
not  the  horse,  is  the  beast;  but  still  he  will  do  it. 
So,  too,  will  he  bully  and  curse  exhausted  men  into 
safety.  That  was  what  happened.  Every  decent 
N.C.O.  and  company  officer — and  far  the  larger 
part  were  decent — did  what  they  could  to  humour 
and  "  buck  "  the  bad  cases  through  the  pangs  of 
endurance.  Some  would  reach  the  journey's  end 
carrying  whole  faggots  of  rifles.  Some  would  put 
by  their  own  daily  rations  of  rum  to  ginger  beaten 
men  through  the  last  mile.  But  there  would  come 
times'  when  only  hard  driving  seemed  to  be  left. 
Bella,  horrida  bell  a  f 

III 

Suppose  those  first  eight  days  In  the  front  and 
support  trenches  to  be  the  beginning  of  a  divi- 
sional tour  of  sixteen  days'  duty  in  the  line.  For 
four  days  now  the  weary  men  would  be  in  re- 
serve, under  enemy  fire,  but  not  in  trenches;  prob- 
ably in  the  cellars  of  ruined  houses.     But  these 

67 


DISENCHANTMENT 

were  not  times  of  rest.  Each  day  or  night  every 
man  would  make  one  or  more  journeys  back  to  the 
trenches  that  they  had  left  carrying  some  load  of 
food,  water,  or  munitions  up  to  the  three  compa- 
nies in  trenches,  or  perhaps  leading  a  pack-mule 
over  land  to  some  point  near  the  front  line,  under 
cover  of  night.  Even  to  lead  a  laden  mule  in  the 
dark  over  waste  ground  confusingly  wired  and 
trenched  is  work;  to  get  him  back  on  to  his  feet 
when  fallen  and  wriggling,  in  wild  consternation, 
among  a  tangle  of  old  barbed  wire  may  be  quite 
hard  work. 

In  intervals  between  these  journeys  most  men 
would  lie  in  the  straw  in  the  cellars  or  hobble 
weakly  about  the  outside  of  the  premises,  looking 
as  boys  sometimes  do  when  stiff  with  many  hearty 
hacks  sustained  in  a  hard  game  of  football,  with 
a  chill  after  it.  They  crawled  in  and  out  of  their 
billets  like  late  autumn  bees,  feebly  scraping  the 
eight  days'  plating  of  mud  off  their  clothes  and 
cleaning  their  jack-knives  after  meals  with  the 
languor  of  the  elders  in  the  Bible  to  whom  the 
grasshopper  was  a  burden.  A  few  robust  spirits, 
armed  with  craft  and  subtlety  more  fully  than  the 
rest,  would  strike  out,  whenever  released,  for 
some  "  just-a-minute,"  or  estaminet,  not  too  far 
off,  nor  yet  too  near,  and  there  lie  perdus,  lest  the 

68 


TEDIUM 

Company  Orderly  Sergeant  warn  them  for  some 
new  liturgy.  This  defensive  policy  did  not  lighten 
the  work  of  their  brethren. 

After  four  days  of  their  labours  as  sumpter 
mules,  or  muleteers,  the  company  would  plod  back 
for  another  four  days  of  duty  in  trenches,  come 
out  yet  more  universally  tired  at  their  end,  and 
drift  back  to  rest-billets,  out  of  ordinary  shell-fire, 
for  their  sixteen  days  or  so  of  "  divisional  rest." 
Here  their  work  was  really  lighter,  but  still  it  was 
work  and  not  rest.  It  did  not  wholly  wind  up 
in  most  of  the  men  the  spring  that  had  run  down 
while  they  were  in  the  line.  And  then  the  divi- 
sion would  go  again  into  the  line,  and  the  old  cycle 
be  worked  through  once  more.  So  most  of  the 
privates  were  tired  the  whole  of  the  time;  some- 
times to  the  point  of  torment,  sometimes  much 
less,  but  always  more  or  less  tired. 

IV 

Many,  of  course,  lost  health  and  drifted 
"  down  the  line,"  as  it  was  called,  to  the  base, 
where  work  might  be  light,  but  much  of  the  com- 
pany rather  more  blighting  than  any  work  to  the 
spirit.  Hither,  to  all  the  divisional  base  depots 
and  into  the  ultimate  dust-hole  or  sink  that  was 
called  "  Base  Details,"  there  gravitated  most  of 

69 


DISENCHANTMENT 

the  walking  wreckage  and  wastage,  physical  and 
moral,  of  active  warfare :  convalescent,  sick  and 
wounded  from  hospital,  men  found  too  old  or  too 
young  for  trench  work,  broken-nerved  men  smug- 
gled out  of  the  way  before  disaster  should  come, 
and  malingerers  triumphant  and  chuckling,  or  only 
semi-successful,  suspect,  and  tediously  over-acting. 
There  was  the  good  man  fretting  and  raging  to 
get  back  to  his  friends  and  the  fight,  away  from 
this  tainted  backwater  in  which  the  swelling  flotil- 
las of  the  unfit  and  the  unwilling  were  left  to  rot 
at  their  moorings.  There  was  the  pallid  and  bent 
London  clerk,  faintly  disguised  in  khaki  but  too 
blind  to  fight,  now  working  furiously  fifteen  hours 
each  day  of  his  seven-day  week  in  the  orderly 
room — no  Sunday  here,  no  Saturday  afternoon — 
for  pure  love  of  international  right.  There  was 
the  dug-out,  the  Grenadier  Guards  sergeant-major 
of  sixty,  the  handsome  and  melancholy  old  boy,  a 
Victorian  survivor  into  our  little  vulgar  age,  with  a 
careful  and  dignified  manner  and  mighty  memories 
of  a  radiant  past  in  London,  when  all  parades,  for 
a  good-conduct-man  well  up  in  his  drill,  were  over 
by  half-past  ten  in  the  morning  and  he  had  a  per- 
manent midnight  pass  into  barracks  and  so  could 
act  as  a  super  at  one  of  the  theatres  every  night 
except  when  doing  a  guard,  and  see  life  and  move 

70 


TEDIUM 

among  genius  and  beauty,  making  good  money. 
Oh,  yes,  he  had  acted  with  Irving  and  Booth,  and 
lived  the  life,  and  heard  the  chimes  at  midnight. 

But  also  the  veteran  crooks,  old  dregs  of  the 
Regular  Army,  Queen  Victoria's  worst  bargains, 
N.C.O.'s  who  would  boast  that  they  had  not  been 
once  on  parade  in  the  last  twenty  years,  waiters 
and  caterers  for  the  whole  of  their  martial  ca- 
reers till  the  liquor  fairly  lipped  over  the  edge  of 
their  eyelids  and  bleached  the  blue  of  their  eyes. 
You  would  hear  one  of  them  boast  that  no  doctor 
on  earth  could  find  him  out  to  be  fit  when  he,  the 
tactician,  wished  otherwise.  Another  had  made 
pathological  studies,  learning  up  the  few  conjec- 
tural symptoms  of  maladies  that  show  no  outward 
trace;  as  science  advanced  to  the  point  of  record- 
ing detectively  the  true  state  of  the  heart  he  had 
deftly  changed  ground,  relinquished  rheumatism 
of  that  organ  and  done  some  work  of  research 
into  pains  in  the  head;  much  faith  did  he  put,  too, 
in  the  sciatic  nerve.  When  a  couple  of  these  sa- 
vants slept  in  one  tent  they  would  argue  after 
Lights  Out — was  sciatica  safest,  or  shell-shock,  or 
general  debility?  "  Them  grey  hairs  should  be  a 
lot  of  use  to  you,  corp.,"  one  of  them  would  quite 
feelingly  say  to  a  new  man  in  the  tent,  "  when  you 
want  to  get  swinging  the  lead." 

71 


DISENCHANTMENT 

While  these  ignoble  presences  befouled  the  air 
of  a  base,  good  things,  also,  were  there;  but  you 
seldom  quite  knew  which  was  which.  All  very 
well  for  the  King  to  come  out  with  his  "  Go,  hang 
yourself,  brave  Crillon !  We  fought  at  Arques 
and  you  were  not  there."  But  if  you,  too,  were 
not  at  the  battle — if  some  unlucky  effect  of  com- 
bustion compelled  you  to  live  as  a  messmate  of 
Crillon,  far,  far  from  Arques  when  the  battle  was 
on,  you  would  have  to  use  tact.  Somehow  the 
man  who  was  undisguisedly  keen  to  get  back  to  the 
centre  of  things  felt  a  slight  coldness  pervading 
the  air  about  him.  It  was  as  if  a  workman,  who 
might  have  so  easily  let  well  alone,  had  sinned 
against  the  trade-union  spirit,  helped  to  raise  the 
standard  of  employers'  expectation,  forced  the 
pace  of  dutifulness  in  a  world  where  authority 
could  be  trusted  to  speed  things  up  quite  enough. 
Even  officers  tended  to  deprecate  the  higher  tem- 
peratures of  ardour  in  other  ranks  of  base  estab- 
lishments. "  You're  out  for  distinction," — one 
honest  rationalist  would  advise — "  that's  what  it 
is.  Well,  trust  to  me — up  the  line's  not  the  place 
where  you  get  it.  Every  time  a  war  ends  you'll 
find  most  of  the  decorations  go  to  the  people  at 
G.H.Q.,  L.  of  C,  and  the  bases.  So,  if  you 
want  a  nice  row  of  ribbons  to  show  to  your  kid- 

72 


TEDIUM 

dies,  stop  here."  And  another  would  put  it  more 
subtly:  "  Isn't  one's  duty,  as  a  rule,  just  here  and 
now?"  Some  were  good-natured;  they  were  not 
for  keeping  the  primrose  path  all  to  themselves. 
Others  were  anxious  lest  the  taking  of  steep  and 
thorny  paths,  as  they  thought  them,  should  come 
to  be  "  the  done  thing." 


The  men  who  could  not  shirk  the  choice  of  Her- 
cules, for  other  people,  were  the  doctors.  The 
stay  of  every  N.C.O.  or  man  at  a  base  depot  was 
on  probation.  Each  had  to  go  before  a  Medical 
Board  soon  after  he  came.  It  adjudged  him  either 
T.B.  (Temporary  Base)  or  P.B.  (Permanent 
Base) .  If  marked  T.B.  he  went  before  the  Board 
again  once  a  week,  and  each  time  he  might  be 
marked  T.B.  again,  or,  if  his  disablement  was 
thought  graver  or  more  likely  to  last,  P.B.;  or 
he  might  be  marked  A.  (Active  Service) ,  and  then 
he  would  join  the  next  draft  from  home  going  up 
to  his  own  battalion  or  another  battalion  of  his 
regiment.  When  once  a  man  was  marked  P.B. 
he  only  went  before  the  Board  once  a  month,  and 
each  time  he,  too,  might  be  marked  either  P.B., 
T.B.,  or  A. 

73 


DISENCHANTMENT 

Chance  relegated  me  once  for  some  weeks  to 
a  base  and  gave  me  the  job  of  marching  parties 
of  crocks,  total  and  partial,  real,  half-real,  and 
sham,  across  the  sand  dunes  to  the  place  where  the 
faculty  did  Its  endeavour  to  sort  them.  A  picture 
remains  of  a  hut  with  a  long  table  In  It:  two  mid- 
dle-aged army  doctors  sitting  beyond  it,  like  dons 
at  a  Viva,  and  each  of  my  party  In  turn  taking  his 
stand  at  attention,  my  side  of  the  table,  facing 
the  Board,  like  so  many  Oliver  Twists.  The  pre- 
siding officer  takes  a  manifest  pride  in  knowing  all 
the  guile  and  subtlety  of  soldier-men.  No  taking 
/n'w  In — that  Is  proclaimed  in  every  look  and  tone. 
He  has  had  several  other  parties  before  him  to- 
day, and  the  lamp  of  his  faith,  never  dazzling 
while  these  rites  are  on,  has  burnt  low. 

"  Well,  my  man — cold  feet,  I  suppose?  "  he  be- 
gins, to  the  first  of  my  lamentable  party.  As  some 
practitioners  are  said  to  begin  all  treatments  with 
a  prefatory  purge,  so  would  this  psychologist  start 
with  a  good  full  dose  of  Insult  and  watch  the  pa- 
tient's reaction  under  the  stimulus. 

"  No,  sir,  me  'eart's  thrutched  up,"  says  the  ex- 
aminee. Then,  while  the  Board  perforates  him 
from  head  to  foot  for  some  seconds  with  a  basi- 
lisk stare  of  unbelief,  he  dribbles  out  at  intervals, 

74 


TEDIUM 

in  a  voice  that  bespeaks  falling  hope,  such  inef- 
fective addenda  as  "  Can't  get  me  sleep  "  and 
"  Not  a  smile  in  me." 

"  Very  picturesque,  indeed,"  says  the  senior  ex- 
pert in  doubting.  "  We'll  see  to  that  'thrutched' 
heart  of  yours.     Kardiagraph  case.     Next  man." 

The  suspect,  duly  spat  upon,  slinks  out.  The 
next  man  takes  his  p.lace  at  the  table.  The  presi- 
dent gives  him  the  Dogberry  eye  that  means : 
"  Masters,  it  is  proved  already  that  you  are  little 
better  than  false  knaves;  and  it  will  go  near  to  be 
thought  so  shortly."  What  he  says  is  :  "  Another 
old  hospital  bird?  Eh?  Now,  hadn't  you  better 
get  back  to  work  before  you're  in  trouble?  " 

The  target  of  this  consputation  is  almost  con- 
vinced by  its  force  that  he  must  be  guilty  of  some- 
thing, if  only  he  knew  what  it  was.  Still,  he  re- 
peats authority's  last  diagnosis  as  well  as  he  can: 
"  Mine's  Arthuritic  rheumatism,  sir.     An'  piles." 

"  Fall  out  and  strip.  Next  man."  While  the 
next  is  taking  his  stand  the  presiding  M.O.  has 
been  making  a  note,  and  does  not  look  up  before 
saying  "  Well,  what's  the  matter  with  you — be- 
sides rheumatism?  " 

"  No  rheumatism,  sir.  And  nothing  else."  The 
voice  is  as  stiff  as  it  dares. 

75 


DISENCHANTMENT 

The  presiding  M.O.  seems  taken  aback.  Why, 
here  is  a  fellow  not  playing  up  to  him!  Making 
a  nasty  break  in  the  long  line  of  cases  that  fed 
his  darling  cynicism  so  well!  Flat  burglary  as 
ever  was  committed.  The  second  member  of  the 
Board  comes  to  life  and  begins  in  a  tone  that  sa- 
vours of  dissatisfaction:  "Well,  you're  the  first 
man " 

"  I'm  an  N.C.O.,  sir."  The  young  lance-ser- 
geant's voice  is  again  about  as  stiff  as  is  safe. 
Quite  safe,  though,  this  time.  For  the  presiding 
M.O.  is  a  Regular.  Verbal  points  of  military  cor- 
rectitude  are  the  law  and  the  prophets  to  him.  He 
cannot  be  wholly  sorry  when  junior  colleagues, 
temporary  commissioners,  slip  up  on  even  the  least 
of  these  shreds  of  orange-peel.  Like  Susan  Nip- 
per, he  knows  his  place — "  me  being  a  perma- 
nency " — and  thinks  that  "  temporaries  "  ought  to 
know  theirs.  So  he  amends  the  outsider's  false 
start  to:  "You're  the  first  N.C.O.  or  man  who 
has  come  before  us  this  morning  and  not  said  he 
had  rheumatism." 

The  sergeant,  whom  I  have  known  for  some 
days  as  a  choleric  body,  holds  his  tongue,  having 
special  reasons  just  now  not  to  risk  a  court-mar- 
tial.    "  Well,"  the  president  snaps  as  if  in  resent- 

76 


TEDIUM 

ment  of  this  self-control,  "  what  is  the  matter  with 
you?" 

*'  Fit  as  can  be,  sir." 

"  What  are  you  doing  down  here,  then,  away 
from  your  unit?  " 

"  Obeying  orders  of  Medical  Board,  sir.  No. 
8  General  Hospital,  December  8." 

"  Not  sorry,  either,  I  daresay,"  the  president 
mutters,  wobbling  back  towards  his  first  line  of 
approach  to  the  business.  "  Not  very  keen  to  go 
back  up  the  line,  sergeant,  eh?  " 

"  It's  all  I  want,  sir,  thank  you."  The  ser- 
geant puts  powerful  brakes  on  his  tongue  and  says 
only  that.  But  he  has  sadly  disconcerted  the  fac- 
ulty. A  major  with  twenty  years'  service  has  cast 
himself  for  the  fine  sombre  part  of  recording  angel 
to  note  all  the  cowardice  and  mendacity  that  he 
can.  And  here  is  a  minor  actor  forgetting  his  part 
and  putting  everything  out.  From  where  I  am 
keeping  a  wooden  face  near  the  door  I  see  oppo- 
sition arising  in  the  heart  of  the  outraged  psy- 
chologist beyond  the  table. 

A  sound  professional  instinct  reinforces  the  per- 
sonal one.  Whenever  a  soldier  goes  before  a 
Medical  Board  it  is  soon  clear  that  he  wants  to 
be  thought  either  less  fit  than  he  is  or  more  fit. 

77 


DISENCHANTMENT 

The  doctor's  first  impulse,  as  soon  as  he  sees  which 
way  the  man's  wishes  tend,  is  to  lean  towards  the 
other.  And  this,  in  due  measure,  is  just.  We 
all  understate  or  overstate  symptoms  to  our  own 
family  doctors  according  to  what  we  fear  or  de- 
sire. The  doctor  rightly  tries  to  detect  the  dis- 
turbing force  in  the  patient's  mind,  and  to  discount 
for  it  duly — just  like  "  laying-off  "  for  a  side-wind 
in  shooting.  So  now  the  president  sees  light  again. 
The  Board  is  now  out  to  find  the  lance-sergeant 
a  crock.  "  Hold  out  your  wrist,"  says  the  senior 
member.    The  pulse  is  jealously  felt. 

"  Rotten !  "  the  senior  member  says  to  the 
junior.  Then,  penetratingly,  to  the  sergeant: 
"  What's  that  cicatrice  you've  got  on  the  back  of 
your  hand?    Both  hands!     Show  me  here." 

Two  spongy,  purplish-red  pads  of  new  flesh  are 
inspected.  "Burns,  scarcely  healed!"  says  the 
president  wrathfuUy.  "  Skin  just  the  strength  of 
wet  tissue-paper!  Man  alive,  you've  a  bracelet  of 
ulcers  all  round  your  wrists.  Never  wash,  eh?  " 
When  liquid  fire  flayed  a  man's  hands  to  the 
sleeve,  but  not  further,  the  skin  was  apt  to  break 
out,  as  he  recovered,  in  small,  deep  boils  about  the 
frontier  of  the  new  skin  and  the  old.  The  ser- 
geant does  not  answer.  He  wants  no  capital  pun- 
ishment under  the  Army  act. 

78 


TEDIUM 

"  Man's  an  absolute  wreck,"  says  the  major. 
"  Debility,  wounds  imperfectly  healed,  blood-poi- 
soning likely.  Not  fit  for  the  line  for  two  months 
to  come.     P.B. — eh?"  he  turns  to  his  junior. 

"  That's  what  /  should  say,  sir,"  the  junior  con- 
curs, in  a  tone  of  desperate  independence. 

"  Next  man,"  says  the  major.  Before  the  lance- 
sergeant  has  quite  stalked  to  the  door  the  major 
calls  after  him  "  Sergeant!  " 

"  Sir?  "  says  the  sergeant,  furious  and  red  but 
contained. 

"  You're  a  damned  good  man,  but  it  won't  do," 
says  the  major.  "Good  luck  to  you!"  Great 
are  the  forces  of  decent  human  relentment  after  a 
hearty  let-out  with  the  temper. 

The  inquisition  proceeds,  still  on  that  Baconian 
principle  of  finding  out  which  is  a  man's  special 
bent  and  then  bending  the  twig  pretty  hard  in  the 
other  direction;  still,  too,  with  the  dry  hght  of 
reason  a  little  suffused,  as  Bacon  would  say,  with 
the  humours  of  the  affections,  of  vanity,  ill-temper 
and  impatience.  Nearly  everybody  is  morally 
weary.  Most  of  the  men  inspected  have  outlived 
the  first  profuse  impulse  to  court  more  of  bodily 
risk  than  authority  expressly  orders.  Most  of  the 
doctors,  living  here  in  the  distant  rear  of  the  war, 

79 


DISENCHANTMENT 

have  outlived  their  first  generous  belief  in  an  al- 
most universally  high  moral  among  the  men.  In 
the  training-camps  in  19 14  the  safe  working  pre- 
sumption about  any  unknown  man  was  that  he 
only  wanted  to  get  at  the  enemy  as  soon  as  he 
could.  Now  the  working  presumption,  the  start- 
ing hypothesis,  is  that  a  man  wants  to  stay  in,  out 
of  the  rain,  as  long  as  you  let  him.  Faith  has 
fallen  lame;  generosity  flags;  there  has  entered 
into  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body  the  malady  known 
to  athletes  as  staleness. 

VI 

The  war  had  more  obvious  disagreeables,  too; 
you  have  heard  all  about  them :  the  quelling  cold- 
ness of  frosty  nights  spent  in  soaked  clothes — for 
no  blankets  were  brought  up  to  the  trenches;  the 
ubiquitous  dust  and  stench  of  corpses  and  buzzing 
of  millions  of  corpse-fed  flies  on  summer  battle- 
fields; and  so  on,  and  so  on — no  need  to  go  over 
the  list.  But  these  annoyances  seemed  to  me  to 
do  less  in  the  way  of  moulding  the  men's  cast 
of  mind  than  that  general,  chronic  weariness, 
different  from  all  the  common  fatigues  of  peace, 
inasmuch  as  each  instalment  of  this  course  of 
exhaustion    was    not    sandwiched    in     between 

80 


TEDIUM 

heavenly  contrasts  of  utter  rest  before  and  after — 
divine  sleeps  in  a  bed  and  dry  clothes,  and  meals 
on  a  table,  with  a  white  tablecloth  on  it  and  shiny 
glasses.  It  raised  some  serious  thoughts  in  pro- 
fessional football-players  and  boxers  who  had  be- 
lieved they  were  strong,  and  in  navvies  and  tough 
mountaineers.  You  need  to  know  this  in  order  to 
understand  the  redoubled  ardour  with  which  that 
capital  soldier,  the  Lancashire  miner,  has  sought 
the  off-day  and  ensued  it  since  he  came  back  from 
campaigning  abroad. 

You  need,  too,  to  know  it  in  order  to  chart  out 
the  general  post-war  condition  of  mind  with  its 
symptoms  of  apathy,  callousness,  and  lassitude. 
Something  has  gone  to  come  of  it  if  you  have  lain 
for  a  time  in  the  garden  of  Proserpine,  where  the 
great  values  decline  and  faith  and  high  impulse 
fall  in  like  souffles  grown  tepid,  and  fatalistic  in- 
difference comes  out  of  long  flat  expanses  of  tiring 
sameness. 

I  am  tired  of  tears  and  laughter, 
And  men  that  laugh  and  weep ; 
Of  what  may  come  hereafter 
For  men  that  sow  to  reap: 
I  am  weary  of  days  and  hours, 
Blown  buds  of  barren  flowers, 
Desires  and  dreams  and  powers 
And  everything  but  sleep. 

8l 


DISENCHANTMENT 

From  too  much  love  of  living, 
From  hope  and  fear  set  free, 
We  thank  with  brief  thanksgiving, 
Whatever  gods  may  be, 
That  no  life  lives  for  ever; 
That  dead  men  rise  up  never; 
That  even  the  weariest  river 
Winds  somewhere  safe  to  sea. 

Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  impute  any  melo- 
dious Swinburnian  melancholy,  or  any  other  form 
of  luxious  self-pity,  to  millions  of  good  fellows 
still  fighting  the  good  fight  against  circumstance. 
They  would  hoot  at  the  notion.  But  in  nearly 
all  of  them  hope  has,  at  some  time  or  other,  lost 
her  first  innocence.  Time  and  place  came  when 
the  spirit,  although  unbroken,  went  numb :  the  dull 
mind  came  to  feel  as  if  its  business  with  ardour 
and  choric  spheres  and  quests  of  Holy  Grails,  and 
everything  but  rest,  had  been  done  quite  a  long 
while  ago.  Well  chained  to  an  oar  in  the  galley, 
closely  kept  to  a  job  in  the  mine,  men  caught  a 
touch  of  the  recklessness  of  the  slave — if  the 
world  were  so  foul,  let  it  go  where  it  chose;  they 
would  snatch  what  they  could,  when  they  could; 
drink,  and  let  the  world  go  round. 

It  is  not  sense  to  hope  to  reattain  at  will  that 
deflowered  virginity  of  faith.  Others  who  have 
it  may  come  in  good  time  to  be  a  majority  of  us 

82 


TEDIUM 

all.  Already  three  yearly  "  classes  "  of  men  who 
did  not  suffer  that  immense  loss  of  experience 
which  came  with  war  service  have  come  of  age 
since  the  war;  the  new  skin  grows  over  the 
wounds.  But  we  cannot  write  off  as  mere  dream, 
with  no  after  effects,  the  time  when  it  was  a  kind 
of  trench  fashion  to  meet  the  demoded  oaths  of  a 

friend  with  the  dogma  that  "  There  is  no  

God." 


83 


CHAPTER     V 

THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 


"  ^^^  F  late  years,"  the  novel  of  Shirley  begins, 
I  1  "  an  abundant  shower  of  curates  has 
^^^  fallen  upon  the  North  of  England;  they 
lie  very  thick  on  the  hills;  every  parish  has  one  or 
more  of  them;  they  are  young  enough  to  be  very 
active,  and  ought  to  be  doing  a  great  deal  of 
good."  This  blessing,  conferred  on  the  West  Rid- 
ing a  little  before  Waterloo,  descended  on  our 
Western  Front  a  little  after  the  first  battle  of  the 
Marne. 

It  was  received  by  our  troops  with  the  greater 
thanksgiving  because  it  brought  with  it  no  percep- 
tible revival  of  church  parades,  a  ministration  of 
which  the  average  private,  I'homme  moyen  sensuel 
of  Matthew  Arnold,  had  taken  a  long  and  glad 
farewell  on  leaving  Salisbury  Plain.  Like  the  in- 
finite cleaning  of  brass-work,  the  hearing  of  many 
well-meaning  divines  in  the  Tidworth  garrison 
church  had  been  one  of  the  tribulations  through 
which  the  defender  of  Britain  must  work  out  his 
passage  to  France.  With  the  final  order  to  tar- 
nish his  buttons  with  fire  and  oil  there  came  also  a 
longed-for  release  from  regular  Sunday  adjura- 
tions to  keep  sober  and  think  of  his  end.     "  The 

84 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

Lorrd,"  said  a  grim  Scots  corporal,  a  hanging 
judge  of  a  sermon,  after  hearing  the  last  essay  of 
our  English  Bossuets  before  he  went  to  the  wars, 
"  hath  turrned  the  capteevity  of  Zion."  No  more 
attendance  for  him  at  such  "  shauchlin'  "  athletic 
displays  as  the  wrestlings  of  the  southron  divinity 
passman  with  the  lithe  and  sinuous  mind  of  St. 
Paul.  "  Sunday,"  the  blithe  Highlander  in  Wa- 
verley  said,  "  seldom  cam  aboon  the  pass  of  Bally 
Brough."  For  better  or  worse,  as  a  reliever  from 
work  or  a  restrainer  of  play,  Sunday  seldom  came 
across  the  Channel  during  the  war.  A  man  in 
the  ranks  might  be  six  months  in  France  and  not 
find  a  religious  service  of  any  kind  coming  his  way, 
whether  he  dreaded  or  sought  it. 

Yet  chaplains  abounded.  Not  measures,  but 
men,  to  invert  the  old  phrase.  And  men  of  all 
kinds,  as  might  safely  be  guessed.  There  was  the 
hero  and  saint,  T.  B,  Hardy,  to  whom  a  consuming 
passion  of  human  brotherhood  brought,  as  well  as 
rarer  things,  the  M.C.,  the  D.S.O.,  the  V.C.,  the 
unaccepted  invitation  of  the  King,  when  he  saw 
Hardy  in  France,  to  come  home  as  one  of  his  own 
chaplains  and  live,  and  then  the  death  which  every- 
one had  seen  to  be  certain.  There  was  a  chaplain 
drunk  at  dinner  in  Gobert's  restaurant  at  Amiens 
on  the  evening  of  one  of  the  bloodiest  days  of  the 

85 


DISENCHANTMENT 

first  battle  of  the  Somme.  There  was  the  circum- 
spect, ecclesiastical  statesman,  out  to  see  that  in 
this  grand  shaking-up  and  re-arranging  of  pre-war 
positions  and  values  the  right  cause — whichever 
of  the  right  causes  was  his — was  not  jilted  or  any 
way  wronged.  There  was  the  man  who,  urged  by 
national  comradeship,  would  have  been  a  soldier 
but  that  his  bishop  barred  it;  to  be  an  army  chap- 
lain was  the  next  best  thing.  There  was  the  man 
who,  urged  by  a  different  instinct,  felt  irresistibly, 
as  many  laymen  did,  that  at  the  moment  the  war 
was  the  central  thing  in  the  whole  world,  and  that 
it  was  unbearable  not  to  be  at  the  centre  of  things. 
And  there  was,  in  great  force,  the  large,  healthy, 
pleasant  young  curate  not  severely  importuned  by 
a  vocation,  the  ex-athlete,  the  prop  and  stay  of 
village  cricket-clubs,  the  good  fellow  whom  the 
desires  of  parents,  the  gaiety  of  his  youth  at  the 
university,  and  the  whole  drift  of  things  about 
him  had  shepherded  unresistingly  into  the  open 
door  of  the  Church.  Sudden,  unhoped-for,  the 
war  had  brought  him  the  chance  of  escape  back  to 
an  almost  solely  physical  life,  like  his  own  happy 
youth  of  rude  health,  only  better  :  a  life  all  salt 
and  tingling  with  vicissitudes  of  simple  bodily  dis- 
comfort and  pleasure,  fatigue  and  rest,  risk  and 
the  ceasing  of  risk;  a  heaven  after  the  flatness, 

86 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

the  tedium,  the  cloying  security  and  the  con- 
founded moral  problems  attending  the  uninspired 
practice  of  professional  brightness  and  breeziness 
in  an  uncritical  parish.  He  abounded  so  much 
that  whenever  now  one  hears  the  words  "  army 
chaplain  "  his  large,  genial  image  springs  up  of 
itself  in  the  mind. 

II 

In  the  eyes  of  the  men  he  had  notable  merits. 
He  was  a  running  fountain,  more  often  than  not, 
of  good  cigarettes.  Of  the  exceeding  smallness  of 
Low  Country  beer  he  could  talk,  man  to  man,  with 
knowledge  and  right  feeling.  He  gladly  fre- 
quented the  least  healthy  parts  of  the  line,  and 
would  frankly  mourn  the  pedantry  which  denied 
him  a  service  revolver  and  did  not  even  allow  him 
the  grievous  ball-headed  club  with  which  a  mediae- 
val bishop  felt  himself  free  to  take  his  own  part 
in  a  war,  because  with  this  lethal  tool  he  did  not 
exactly  shed  blood,  though  he  dealt  liberally 
enough  in  contused  wounds  that  would  serve 
equally  well.  Having  a  caste  of  his  own,  not  pre- 
cisely the  combatant  officer's,  he  had  a  tongue 
less  rigidly  tied  in  the  men's  hearing,  so  he  could 
soothe  the  couch  of  a  wounded  sergeant  by  telling 
him,  with  a  diverting  gusto,  how  downily  the  old 

87 


DISENCHANTMENT 

colonel,  the  one  last  ungummed,  had  timed  his 
enteric  inoculation  at  home  so  as  to  rescue  himself 
from  the  fiery  ordeal  of  a  divisional  field-day. 
These  were  solid  merits.  And  yet  there  was  some- 
thing about  this  type  of  chaplain — he  had  his  coun- 
terpart in  all  the  churches — with  which  the  com- 
mon men-at-arms  would  privily  and  temperately 
find  a  little  fault.  He  seemed  to  be  only  too  much 
afraid  of  having  it  thought  that  he  was  anything 
more  than  one  of  themselves.  He  had,  with  a 
vengeance,  "  no  clerical  nonsense  about  him." 
The  vigour  with  which  he  threw  off  the  parson  and 
put  on  the  man  and  the  brother  did  not  always 
strike  the  original  men  and  brothers  as  it  was  in- 
tended. Your  virllist  chaplain  was  apt  to  overdo, 
to  their  mind,  his  jolly  Implied  disclaimers  of  any 
compromising  connection  with  kingdoms  not  of 
this  world.  For  one  thing,  he  was,  for  the  taste 
of  people  versed  In  carnage,  a  shade  too  fussily 
bloodthirsty.  Nobody  made  such  a  point  of  ap- 
ing your  little  trench  affectations  of  callousness; 
nobody  else  was  so  anxious  to  keep  you  assured 
that  the  blood  of  the  enemy  smelt  as  good  to  his 
nose  as  it  could  to  any  of  yours.  In  the  whole 
blood-and-iron  province  of  talk  he  would  not  only 
outshine  any  actual  combatant — that  is  quite  easy 
to  do — but  he  would  outshine  any  colonel  who 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

lived  at  a  base.  I  never  met  a  regimental  officer 
or  "  other  rank  "  who  wanted  a  day  more  of  the 
war  for  himself,  his  friends  or  his  country  after 
the  Armistice.  But  I  have  heard  more  than  one 
chaplain  repining  because  the  Icilling  was  not  to  go 
on  until  a  few  German  towns  had  been  smashed 
and  our  last  thing  in  gas  had  had  a  fair  innings. 

No  doubt  the  notion  was  good,  in  a  way.  If  the 
parson  in  war  was  to  make  the  men  mind  what  he 
said  he  must  not  stand  too  coldly  aloof  from  "  the 
men's  point  of  view  " :  he  must  lay  his  mind  close 
up  alongside  theirs,  so  as  to  get  a  hold  of  their 
souls.  It  sounds  all  right;  the  wisdom  of  the 
serpent  has  been  bidden  to  back  up  the  labours  of 
the  dove.  And  yet  the  men,  however  nice  they 
might  be  to  the  chaplain  himself,  would  presently 
say  to  each  other  in  private  that  "  Charlie  came 
it  too  thick,"  while  still  allowing  that  he  was  a 
"  proper  good  sort."  They  felt  there  was  some- 
thing or  other — they  could  not  tell  what — which 
he  might  have  been  and  which  he  was  not.  They 
could  talk  lyddite  and  ammonal  well  enough  for 
themselves,  but,  surprising  to  say,  they  secretly 
wanted  a  change  from  themselves;  had  the  parsons 
really  nothing  to  say  of  their  own  about  this  noi- 
some mess  in  which  the  good  old  world  seemed  to 

89 


DISENCHANTMENT 

be  foundering?  The  relatively  heathen  English 
were  only  groping  about  to  find  out  what  it  was 
that  they  missed;  the  Scots,  who  have  always  had 
theology  for  a  national  hobby,  made  nearer  ap- 
proaches to  being  articulate.  Part  of  a  famous  di- 
vision of  Highland  infantry  were  given  one  day,  as 
a  special  treat,  a  harangue  by  one  of  the  most 
highly  reputed  of  chaplains.  This  spell-binder 
preached  like  a  tempest — the  old  war-sermon,  all 
God  of  Hosts  and  chariots  of  wrath  and  laying 
His  rod  on  the  back  of  His  foes,  and  other  thun- 
derous sounds  such  as  were  then  reverberating,  no 
doubt,  throughout  the  best  churches  in  Berlin.  In 
the  south-western  postal  district  of  London,  too, 
his  cyclone  might  have  had  a  distinguished  success 
at  the  time.  As  soon  as  the  rumbling  died  away 
one  of  the  hard-bitten  kilted  sergeants  leant  across 
to  another  and  quoted  dourly:  "A  great  and 
strong  wind,  but  the  Lorrd  was  not  in  the  wind." 

Ill 

"  I've  been  a  Christian  all  my  life,  but  this  war 
is  a  bit  too  serious."  So  saying,  a  certain  New 
Army  recruit  had  folded  up  his  religion  in  19 14, 
and  put  it  away,  as  it  were,  in  a  drawer  with  his 
other  civil  attire  to  wait  until  public  affairs  should 

90 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

again  permit  of  their  use.  He  had  said  it  quite 
simply.  A  typical  working-class  Englishman,  lit- 
eral, serious,  and  straight,  he  had  not  got  one  loop 
of  subtlety  or  one  vibration  of  irony  in  his  whole 
mind.  Like  most  of  his  kind  he  had,  as  a  rule, 
left  church-going  to  others.  Like  most  of  them, 
too,  he  had  read  the  Gospels  and  found  that  what- 
ever Christ  had  said  mattered  enormously  :  it  built 
itself  into  the  mind;  when  any  big  choice  had  to 
be  made  it  was  at  least  a  part  of  that  which  de- 
cided. Not  having  ever  been  taught  how  to  dodge 
an  awkward  home-thrust  at  his  conscience,  he  felt, 
all  unblunted,  the  point  of  what  Christ  had  said 
about  such  things  as  wealth  and  war  and  loving 
one's  enemies.  Getting  rich  made  you  bad;  fight- 
ing was  evil — better  submit  than  resist.  There 
was  no  getting  over  such  doctrine,  nor  round  it: 
why  try? 

Ever  since  those  disconcerting  bombs  were  orig- 
inally thrown  courageous  divines  and  laymen  have 
been  rushing  in  to  pick  them  up  and  throw  them 
away,  combining  as  well  as  they  could  an  air  of  re- 
spect for  the  thrower  with  tender  care  for  the 
mental  ease  of  congregations  occupied  generally 
in  making  money  and  occasionally  in  making  war. 
Yet  there  they  lie,  miraculously  permanent  and  dis- 

91 


DISENCHANTMENT 

turbing,  as  if  just  thrown.  Now  and  then  one 
will  go  off,  with  seismic  results,  in  the  mind  of 
some  St.  Francis  or  Tolstoy.  And  yet  it  remains 
where  it  was,  like  the  plucked  Golden  Bough: 
lino  aviilso,  non  deficit  alter,  ready  as  ever  to 
work  on  a  guileless  mind  like  our  friend's. 

But  this  war  had  to  be  won;  that  was  flat.  It 
was  like  putting  out  houses  on  fire,  or  not  letting 
children  be  killed;  it  did  not  even  need  to  be 
proved;  that  we  had  got  to  win  was  now  the  one 
quite  certain  thing  left  in  a  world  of  shaken  cer- 
tainties. Any  religion  or  anything  else  that 
seemed  to  chill,  or  deter,  or  suggest  an  alternative 
need  not  be  wholly  renounced.  But  it  had  to  be 
put  away  in  a  drawer.  After  the  war,  when  that 
dangerous  precept  about  the  left  cheek  could  no 
longer  do  serious  harm,  it  might  come  out  again; 
our  friend  would  see  what  could  be  done.  For 
he  was  a  man  more  strongly  disposed  than  most 
of  his  fellows  to  hold,  if  he  honestly  could,  the 
tenets  of  some  formal  religion.  "  They  got  hold 
o'  something,"  he  used  to  say,  with  curiosity  and 
some  respect,  of  more  regular  practitioners  than 
himself.  "  Look  at  the  Salvation  Army  legging 
along  in  the  mud  and  their  eyes  fair  shining  with 
happiness!  Aye,  they  got  on  to  something."  He 
would  investigate,  when  the  time  came. 

92 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

IV 

The  testimonies  that  might  have  ensued  were 
foreclosed  by  a  shell  that  buried  him  alive  in  Oppy 
Wood,  under  the  Vimy  Ridge,  where  he  was  en- 
gaged in  diverting  the  energies  of  the  Central 
Powers  from  the  prostrate  army  of  Nivelle.  He 
had  by  then  been  two  years  in  France,  and  had 
told  a  few  friends  about  various  "  queer  feels  " 
and  "  rum  goes  "  which  he  would  not  have  known 
by  name  if  you  had  called  them  spiritual  experi- 
ences. One  of  his  points — though  he  did  not  put 
it  in  that  way — was  that  in  war  a  lot  of  raw  ma- 
terial for  making  some  sort  of  religion  was  lying 
about,  but  that  war  also  made  some  of  the  fin- 
ished doctrinal  products  now  extant  look  pretty 
poor,  especially,  as  he  said,  "  all  the  damning 
department."  Rightly  or  wrongly,  no  men  who 
have  been  close  friends  for  a  year,  and  who  know 
that  in  the  next  few  hours  they  are  nearly  as  likely 
as  not  to  be  killed  together  in  doing  what  they  all 
hold  to  be  right,  will  entertain  on  any  terms  the 
idea  of  any  closing  of  gates  of  divine  mercy,  open 
to  themselves,  in  the  face  of  any  comrade  in  the 
business. 

The  sunshine  of  one  of  the  first  clement  days  of 
19 1 6  drew  him  about  as  far  as  I  heard  him  go 

93 


DISENCHANTMENT 

on  the  positive  side.  "  You  know  what  it  is,"  he 
said  in  the  course  of  one  of  the  endless  trench 
talks,  "  when  you  got  to  make  up  your  mind  to  do 
as  you  oughter.  Worry  and  fuss  and  oh,  ain't  it 
too  hard,  and  why  the  'ell  can't  I  let  myself  off ! — 
that's  how  it  is.    Folia  me  ?  " 

The  audience  grunted  assent.  "Some  other 
time,"  he  pursued,  "  perhaps  once  in  ten  years,  it's 
all  t'other  way.  You're  set  free  like.  Kind  of  a 
miracle.  Don't  even  have  to  think  what  you're 
going  to  get  by  it.  All  you  know  is  that  there's 
just  the  one  thing,  in  all  the  whole  world,  good 
enough.  Doing  it  ain't  even  hard.  All  the  sport 
there  ever  was  has  been  took  out  of  everything 
else  and  put  into  that.  Kind  of  a  miracle.  Folia 
me?" 

"  That's  right,"  another  man  confirmed. 
"  You'll  see  it  at  fires  when  people  are  like  to  be 
burnt.  Men'll  go  fair  mad  to  help  them.  Don't 
think.  Don't  feel  it  if  they're  hurt.  Fair  off  it  to 
get  at  them — same  as  a  dog  when  you  throw  a 
stick  in  a  pond." 

"Ah,  then,"  contributed  somebody  else,  "  you've 
only  to  hear  a  man  with  a  grand  tenor  voice  in  a 
song  till  you'll  feel  a  coolness  blowing  softly  and 
swif'ly  over  your  face   and  then  gone,  the  way 

94 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

you'd  have  died  on  a  cross  with  all  the  pleasure  in 
life  while  it  lasted." 

"Aye,  and  you'll  get  it  from  whisky,"  another 
put  in.  "Isn't  it  just  what  more  men'U  get  drunk 
for  than  anything  else  ?  And  why  the  rum's  dou- 
ble before  you  go  over?  " 

No  doubt  you  know  all  about  it  from  books, 
and  you  may  prefer  the  wording  of  that  tentative 
approach  made  by  the  most  spiritually-minded  of 
modern  philosophers  to  a  definition  of  God — 
"  Something  that  is  in  and  about  me,  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  which  I  am  free  from  fear  and  de- 
sire— something  which  would  make  it  easy  to  do 
the  most  (otherwise)  difficult  thing  without  any 
other  motive  except  that  it  was  the  one  thing 
worth  doing."  And  William  James  has,  of  course, 
shown  more  skill  in  explaining  what  mystic  ecstasy 
is  and  what  is  its  place  in  religion,  and  what  its 
relations  to  such  mirages  of  itself  as  the  mock 
inspirations  of  Antony's  lust  and  Burns'  drunken- 
ness. 

And  yet  the  clumsy  fumblings  of  uninstructed 
people  among  things  of  the  spirit  might,  one  im- 
agines, be  just  such  stuff  as  a  skilled  teacher  and 
leader  in  this  field  might  have  delighted  to  come 
upon  and  to  inspirit  and  marshal.  With  tongues 
unwontedly  loosened  men  would  set  to  and  dig  out 

95 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  themselves,  not  knowing  what  it  was,  the  clay 
of  which  the  bricks  are  made  with  which  religions 
are  built.  One  man,  with  infinite  exertions  of  dis- 
entanglement, would  struggle  up  to  some  expres- 
sion of  the  fugitive  trance  of  realization  into 
which  he  had  found  he  could  throw  himself  by  let- 
ting his  mind  go,  for  all  it  was  worth,  on  the 
thought  of  his  own  self,  his  "  I-ness  "  until  for  some 
few  seconds  of  poised  exaltation  he  had  thought 
self  clean  away  and  was  free.  "  It  first  came  by  a 
fluke  when  I  was  a  kiddy.  If  I'd  lie  in  my  cot, 
very  still,  and  look  hard  a  long  time  at  the  candle, 
and  think  very  hard—'  I,'  '  I,'  '  I,'  what's  '  I?  '  I 
could  work  myself  up  to  that  state  I'd  be  right  out- 
side o'  myself,  and  seeing  the  queer  little  body  I'd 
been,  with  my  thought  about  '  I '  doing  this  and 
'  I  '  getting  that,  and  the  way  that  I'd  thought  it 
was  natural  I  should,  and  no  such  a  thing  as  any 
'  I  '  there  all  the  time,  or  only  one  to  the  whole 
set  of  us.  Hard  I'd  try,  every  time,  to  hold  the 
thing  on.  Seemed  as  if  there  was  no  end  to  what 
I  might  get  to  know  if  I  could  make  it  last  out, 
that  sort  of  rum  start.  But  the  thing  went  to  bits 
every  time,  next  moment  after  I'd  got  it  worked 
up,  and  there  I'd  be  left  on  the  mat  like,  and  think- 
ing '  Gosh!  what  a  pitch  I  got  up  to  that  time!  ' 
and  how  I'd  screw  it  up  higher,  next  go." 

96 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

Then  somebody  else  would  bring  up  the  way  he 
had  been  taken  by  that  queer  little  rent  in  the  veil 
of  common  experience — the  sudden  rush  of  cer- 
tainty that  something  which  is  happening  now  has 
all  happened  before,  or  that  some  place,  when  first 
we  see  it,  has  really  been  known  to  us  of  old  and  is 
only  being  revisited  now,  not  discovered.  You 
know  how  you  seem,  when  that  sudden  light 
comes,  to  escape  for  a  while  from  your  common 
thoughts  about  time,  as  if  out  of  a  prison  in  which 
you  have  been  shut  up  so  long  that  you  had  almost 
forgotten  what  it  is  to  be  free :  it  flashes  into  your 
mind  that  immortality,  for  all  you  know,  may  exist 
within  one  moment;  that  life,  for  all  you  know, 
may  draw  out  into  state  after  state,  and  that  all 
that  you  are  conscious  of  at  common  times  might 
be  merely  a  drop  or  two  lipping  over  the  edge  of 
the  full  vessel  of  some  vast  consciousness  animat- 
ing the  whole  world. 

Another  man  would  bring  into  the  common 
stock  a  recollection  of  the  kind  of  poignant  por- 
trait dream  that  sometimes  comes:  not  a  dream 
of  any  incident,  but  only  the  face  of  a  friend,  more 
living  than  life,  with  all  the  secret  kindness  and 
loneliness  of  his  mind  suddenly  visible  in  the  face, 
so  that  you  think  of  him  as  you  think  of  your 

97 


DISENCHANTMENT 

mother  when  she  is  dead  and  the  stabbing  insight 
of  remorse  begins. 

Thus  would  these  inexpert  people  hang  uncon- 
sciously about  the  uncrossed  threshold  of  religion. 
With  minds  which  had  recovered  in  some  degree 
the  penetrative  simplicity  of  a  child's,  they  dis- 
interred this  or  that  unidentified  bone  of  the  buried 
God  from  under  the  monumental  piles  of  debris 
which  the  learned,  the  cunning,  and  the  proud, 
priests  and  kings,  churches  and  chapels,  had 
heaped  up  over  the  ideas  of  perfect  love,  of  faith 
that  would  leave  all  to  follow  that  love,  and  of  the 
faithful  spirit's  release  from  mean  fears  of  ex- 
tinction. In  talk  they  could  bring  each  other  up 
to  the  point  of  feeling  that  little  rifts  had  opened 
here  and  there  in  the  screens  which  are  hung  round 
the  life  of  man  on  the  earth,  and  that  they  had 
peeped  through  into  some  large  outer  world  that 
was  strange  only  because  they  were  used  to  a  small 
and  dim  one.  They  were  prepared  and  expectant. 
If  any  official  religion  could  ever  refine  the  gold 
out  of  all  that  rich  alluvial  drift  of  "  obstinate 
questionings  of  sense  and  outward  things,"  now 
was  its  time.  No  figure  of  speech,  among  all  these 
that  I  have  mixed,  can  give  the  measure  of  the 
greatness  of  that  opportunity. 

98 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

V 

Nobody  used  it:  the  tide  in  the  affairs  of 
churches  flowed  its  best,  but  no  church  came  to 
take  it.  Instead,  as  if  chance  had  planned  a  kind 
of  satiric  practical  epigram,  came  the  brigade 
chaplain.  As  soon  as  his  genial  bulk  hove  in  sight, 
and  his  cheery  robustious  chaff  began  blowing 
about,  the  shy  and  uncouth  muse  of  our  savage 
theology  unfolded  her  wings  and  flew  away.  Once 
more  the  talk  was  all  footer  and  rations  and  scrag- 
ging the  Kaiser,  and  how  "  the  Hun  "  would  walk 
a  bit  lame  after  the  last  knock  he  had  got.  Very 
nice,  too,  in  its  way.  And  yet  there  had  been  a 
kind  of  a  savour  about  the  themes  that  had  now 
shambled  back  in  confusion,  before  the  clerical  on- 
set, into  their  twilight  lairs  in  the  souls  of  individ- 
ual laymen. 

When  you  want  to  catch  the  Thames  gudgeon 
you  first  comb  the  river's  bed  hard  with  a  long 
rake.  In  the  turbid  water  thus  caused  the  crea- 
tures will  be  on  the  feed,  and  if  you  know  how  to 
fish  you  may  get  a  great  take.  For  our  profes- 
sional fishers  of  men  in  the  army  the  war  did  the 
raking  gratis.  The  men  came  under  their  hands 
at  the  time  of  most  drastic  experience  in  most 
of  the  men's  lives,  immersed  in  a  new  and  strange 

99 


DISENCHANTMENT 

life  of  sensations  at  once  simple  and  intense, 
shaken  roughly  out  of  the  world  of  mechanical 
habit  which  at  most  times  puts  a  kind  of  bar  be- 
tween one's  mind  and  truth,  living  always  among 
swiftly  dying  friends  and  knowing  their  own  death 
at  any  time  to  be  as  probable  as  anyone's.  To  get 
rid  of  your  phlegm,  it  was  said,  is  to  be  a  philoso- 
pher. It  is  also  to  be  a  saint,  at  least  in  the  rough; 
you  have  broken  the  frozen  ground;  you  can  grow 
anything  now;  you  can  see  the  greatest  things 
in  the  very  smallest,  so  that  sunrise  on  Iverness 
Copse  is  the  morning  of  the  first  day  and  a  spoon- 
ful of  rum  and  a  biscuit  a  sacrament.  Imagine 
the  religious  revival  that  there  might  have  been 
if  some  man  of  apostolic  genius  had  had  the  fish- 
ing in  the  troubled  waters,  the  ploughing  and  sow- 
ing of  the  broken  soil. 

The  frozen  fountain  would  have  leapt, 

The  buds  gone  on  to  blow, 
The  warm  south  wind  would  have  awaked 

To  melt  the  snow. 

Nothing  now  perceptible  came  of  it  all.  What, 
indeed,  could  the  average  army  chaplain  have 
done,  with  his  little  budget  of  nice  traits  and  limi- 
tations?    How  had  we  ever  armed  and  equipped 

100 


THE  SHEEP  THAT  WERE  NOT  FED 

him?  When  you  are  given  an  infant  earth  to  fash- 
ion out  of  a  whirling  ball  of  flaming  metals  and 
gases,  then  good  humour,  some  taste  for  adven- 
ture, distinction  at  cricket,  a  jolly  way  with  the 
men,  and  an  imperfect  digestion  of  thirty-nine 
partly  masticated  articles  may  not  carry  you  far. 
You  may  come  off,  by  no  fault  of  your  own,  like 
the  curate  in  Shakespeare  who  was  put  up  to  play 
Alexander  the  Great:  "  A  marvellous  good  neigh- 
bour, i'  faith,  and  a  very  good  bowler:  but,  for 
Alisander — alas,  you  see  how  'tis — a  little  o'er- 
parted." 

The  men,  once  again,  did  not  put  it  in  that 
way.  They  did  not  miss  anything  that  most  of 
them  could  have  described.  They  only  felt  a  va- 
cancy, an  unspecified  void,  like  the  want  of  some 
unknown  great  thing  in  their  generals'  minds  and 
in  the  characters  of  their  rulers  at  home.  The 
chaplain's  tobacco  was  all  to  the  good;  so  was 
the  civil  tongue  that  he  kept  in  his  head;  so  were 
all  the  good  turns  that  he  did.  But,  when  it  came 
to  religion,  were  these  things  *'  all  there  was  to 
it"?  Had  the  churches  really  not  "  got  hold  of 
something,"  with  all  their  enormous  deposits  of 
stone  and  mortar  and  clerical  consequence?  So, 
in  his  own  way,  the  army  chaplain,  too,  became 

lOI 


DISENCHANTMENT 

a  tributary  brook  feeding  the  general  reservoir  of 
disappointment  and  mistrust  that  was  steadily 
filled  by  the  surface  drainage  of  all  the  higher 
ground  of  our  British  social  landscape  under  the 
dirty  weather  of  the  war. 


102 


CHAPTER     VI 

'WARE    POLITICIANS 

I 

WHEN  a  man  enlisted  during  the  war  he 
found  himself  living  the  life  of  the  com- 
mon man  in  a  Communist  State.  Once 
inside  he  had  no  more  choices  to  make  than  a  Rus- 
sian under  the  Soviet.  His  work,  his  pay,  his 
food,  his  place  and  mode  of  living  were  fixed  from 
on  high.  He  might  not  even  decide  whether  he 
should  remain  a  soldier  or  be  turned,  say,  into  a 
miner.  If  the  wisdom  that  sat  up  aloft  put  him 
down  for  a  draft  to  a  tunnelling  company,  to  earth 
he  went.  He  had  ceased  to  be  Economic  Man, 
the  being  whom  we  were  brought  up  to  regard  as 
causing  the  world  to  go  round  by  making  a  bee- 
line  to  the  best  pay  available.  Now  he  was  ex- 
Economic  Man,  or  Economic  Man  popped  off  all 
the  hooks  that  had  fastened  him  into  a  place  in  the 
system  called  capitalistic  by  those  who  least  admire 
it.  No  one  was  left  to  say  of  a  job  any  longer 
that  you  might  "  take  it  or  leave  it,"  for  leaving 
was  barred.  You  could  not  be  called  a  wage-slave, 
for  you  got  no  wages  to  speak  of.  You  had  be- 
come a  true  "  proletarian  "  under  a  pretty  big- 
fisted  dictatorship.  It  might  not  be  a  dictatorship 
of  the  proletariat,  but  a  dictatorship  smells  about 

103 


DISENCHANTMENT 

as  sweet  by  one  name  as  another  when  it  levers  you 
out  of  bed  before  dawn  or  ties  you  up  to  the  wheel 
of  a  gun  for  cutting  a  job  that  irks  you.  Dr. 
Johnson  declined  to  attempt  to  settle  degrees  of 
precedence  between  a  flea  and  a  louse.  It  is  as 
hard  to  decide  between  the  charms  of  a  "  sanitary 
fatigue  "  when  done  for  our  War  Office  and  when 
done  for  Mr.  Lenin. 

In  a  sense,  no  doubt,  the  average  man  liked  it 
all — the  sense  in  which  men  like  to  break  the  ice 
in  the  Serpentine  for  a  swim.  He  had  willed  it. 
He  felt  that  when  it  was  over  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  to  have  done.  But  he  also  saw,  perhaps 
with  surprise,  that  there  were  many  men  who  liked 
it  wholly,  without  any  juggling  with  future  and 
pluperfect  tenses.  They  liked  to  have  their  hours 
of  rising  and  going  to  bed  settled  by  colonel  or 
Soviet  rather  than  face  for  themselves  this  dis- 
tracting problem  in  self-government.  They  liked 
meals  which  they  did  not  choose,  and  which  might 
not  be  good,  but  which  came  up  of  themselves,  in 
their  season,  like  grass.  They  liked  quarters 
which  they  might  perhaps  have  to  share  with 
brethren  too  weak  to  carry  their  liquor  and  not 
too  wise  to  essay  great  feats  of  the  kind,  but 
which,  anyhow,  did  not  have  to  be  sought  for, 
rented,   furnished,   and,   on  every  Monday,  paid 

104 


'WARE    POLITICIANS 

for  with  a  separate  pang.  They  liked,  at  any  rate 
as  the  lesser  evil,  work  which  was  no  subject  of 
either  collective  or  individual  bargain,  but  came 
out  of  the  sky,  like  the  weather,  usually  open  to 
objection,  but  sometimes  not. 

Perhaps  you  concluded,  after  a  time,  that  there 
must  be  some  temperaments  communistic  or  social- 
istic by  nature,  like  the  "  souls  Christian  by  na- 
ture "  of  the  theologians.  You  might  even  have 
suspected  that  in  all  this  wide  field  of  dispute  the 
most  fundamental  difference  is  not  between  the  in- 
trinsic and  absolute  merits  of  the  individuahstic 
and  of  the  communistic  State,  but  between  two 
contrasted  human  types — the  type  which  is  actual- 
ly happiest  in  communal  messes  and  dormito- 
ries and  playgrounds  and  forced  labour  and  State- 
fixed  pay  in  a  State-chosen  career,  and  the  type 
which  exults  in  even  the  smallest  separate  cottage 
and  garden,  as  a  lion  rejoices  in  his  own  den; 
the  type  which  cooks  its  mutton  with  a  special  rap- 
ture in  an  exclusive  oven,  however  imperfect,  and 
sallies  forth  rejoicing,  as  the  bridegroom  goeth 
out  from  his  chamber,  to  angle  for  the  dearest 
market  for  the  labour  of  its  hands  and  the  cheap- 
est for  its  victuals.  So  that  the  only  ideal  solu- 
tion might  be  to  cut  up  the  world,  or  each  of  its 
States,  into  two  hemispheres,  as  trains  are  divided 

105 


DISENCHANTMENT 

into  "  non-smoking  "  and  "  smoking."  A  little 
difficult,  perhaps;  but  then  it  is  difficult  to  make 
either  breed  be  happy  in  the  other's  paradise. 

II 

Other  speculations  were  apt  to  visit  your  mind 
if,  later  on  in  the  war,  as  a  New  Army  officer,  you 
watched,  open-mouthed,  the  way  that  much  of  the 
Regular  Army's  business  was  done.  In  civil  life 
you  might  have  had  wild  dreams  of  what  business 
life  would  be  like  if  its  one  great,  black,  ruling, 
quelling  possibility  were  for  ever  removed,  if  the 
last  Official  Receiver  had  gone  the  way  of  the 
great  auk,  and  the  two-handed  engine  of  bank- 
ruptcy stood  no  longer  at  the  door,  its  place  being 
taken  by  a  genie  carrying  countless  Treasury  notes 
and  ready  to  come  in  and  "  make  it  all  right  "  as 
soon  as  you  gave  the  slightest  rub  to  the  electric 
lamp  on  your  desk.  How  nobly  free  you  would 
be  from  the  base  care  of  overhead  charges  !  How 
pungently  you  would  keep  in  his  proper  place  any 
large  customer  whose  tone  displeased  you  I  How 
handsomely,  when  in  a  generous  mood,  you  would 
cast  away  the  sordid  preoccupation  of  getting 
value  for  money  and  indulge  yourself  with  a  sight 
of  the  smile-wreathed  face  of  a  friend  to  whom 

io6 


'WARE    POLITICIANS 

you  had  given  the  bargain  of  a  lifetime!  How 
dignified  a  leisure  you  would  enjoy  after  all  those 
years  of  answering  letters  on  the  day  you  got  them  ! 
Or,  if  that  were  your  line,  how  high  you  would 
wave  the  banner  of  an  ideal  precision,  stooping  to 
none  of  the  slavish,  supple  complaisances  of  com- 
petitive commerce,  but  making  everyone  who 
wrote  a  letter  to  you  mind  his  P's  and  Q's,  and  do 
the  thing  in  form,  and  go  on  doing  it  until  he 
got  it  right,  as  long  as  the  forests  of  Scandinavia 
held  out  to  supply  you  both  with  stationery! 

In  the  throes  of  a  great  war,  and  within  sound 
of  its  guns,  the  genius  of  our  race  achieved,  at 
any  rate  in  some  minor  departmental  Edens,  this 
approach  to  a  business  man's  heaven.  To  the 
rightful  inhabitants  of  these  paradises  the  intru- 
sion of  an  ordinary  fallen  business  man,  with  his 
vulgar  notions  of  efficiency,  gave  something  of  a 
shock.  He  seemed  cold  and  clammy — a  serpent 
in  the  garden.  "  At  the  War  Office,"  an  old  Staff 
officer  plaintively  said  to  one  of  these  kill-joys, 
"  we  never  used  to  open  the  afternoon  letters  till 
the  next  day."  He  felt  that  life  would  lose  its  old- 
world  bloom  if  he  had  to  do  things  on  the  nail. 
"After  all,  it  won't  kill  the  British  taxpayer  " — 
that  was  another  golden  formula. 

107 


DISENCHANTMENT 
III 

Returned  from  these  illuminating  experiences 
the  victorious  soldier  finds  the  British  taxpayer — 
not,  indeed,  killed,  but  rubbing  his  wounds  and 
groaning  and  being  advised  by  several  different 
kinds  of  friends  to  try  if  a  hair,  or  perhaps  the 
whole  skin,  of  the  dog  that  bit  him  will  make  him 
feel  better.  "Put  your  trust,"  say  the  august  po- 
litical authoritarians,  "  in  your  natural  rulers, 
from  Lord  Chaplin  and  the  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land down  to  about  as  low  as  Sir  Eric  Geddes; 
scrap  all  the  outworn  and  discredited  humbug  of 
democracy  and  parliamentarism;  recognize  that 
only  a  governing  class  with  ample  traditions  of 
skill  and  devotion  can  govern  to  any  effect. 

"  Rats!  "  observe  the  Extreme  Left;  "  all  that 
ramp  was  exposed  long  ago — ruling  class  and  Par- 
liament, and  all  of  it.  Turn  down  aristocracy  and 
democracy,  too,  and  put  your  money  on  the  Dic- 
tatorship of  the  Proletariat  and "     At  which 

the  poor  tax-paying  proletarian  looks  up  with  a 
gleam  of  hope  and  asks  if  he  may  begin  dictating 
now.  With  a  pitying  smile  the  Extreme  Left  ex- 
plains that  it  is  to  be  named  his  dictatorship,  but 
that  it  will  be  exercised  not  by  him  but  by  the 
Proper  Persons.     Will  he  elect  them?  he  asks. 

io8 


'WARE    POLITICIANS 

Oh,  no;  that  would  be  mere  bourgeois  Liberalism, 
quite  out  of  date.  Well,  he  asks,  how  is  he  to  feel 
sure  that  they  will  do  what  he  wants?  Can  he 
doubt  it? — he  is  reproachfully  asked.  Does  he 
not  see  that  men  ruling  only  as  dictators  for  the 
whole  nation,  men  serving  only  their  country  and 
no  grubby  individual  employer  or  caucus,  will  and 
must  be  fired,  at  once  and  for  ever,  with  a  new 
spirit  of  devotion,  wisdom,  purity,  humanity,  and 
love  such  as  was  never  yet  seen  on  earth — indeed, 
could  not  be  seen  on  it  while  its  surface  was  de- 
faced with  Houses  of  Parliament  and  joint-stock 
mills? 

At  this  point  the  demobilized  business  man  is 
likely  to  go  out  sorrowfully,  reflecting  that  thanks 
to  the  war  he  has  known,  in  turn,  what  it  is  to 
be  one  of  the  rulers,  and  what  it  is  to  be  one  of 
the  ruled,  in  a  community  where  the  people  below 
have  no  hold  on  the  people  above,  and  where  the 
people  above  are  pricked  by  no  coarser  spur  than 
their  own  pure  zeal  for  the  best  of  causes  in  the 
sorest  of  its  straits.  Communism  delights  him 
not,  nor  Toryism  either. 

Nor,  indeed,  any  other  political  creed  of  all 
those  that  he  knows.  Liberals  he  has,  perhaps, 
come  to  figure  as  sombre  and  dry,  all-round  pro- 
hibitors,  humanitarians  but  not  humanists,  people 

109 


DISENCHANTMENT 

with  democratic  principles  but  not  democratic  sym- 
pathies, uncomradelike  lovers  of  man,  preaching 
the  brotherhood  of  nations  but  not  knowing  how 
to  speak  without  offence  to  a  workman  from  their 
own  village.  The  Labour  Party,  indeed,  he  may 
feel  to  be,  as  yet,  not  wholly  damned,  but  chiefly 
because  it  has  never  been  tried  at  the  big  job. 
Its  leaders  have  not,  like  the  Liberal  and  Con- 
servative chiefs,  to  answer  for  any  grand  public 
triumphs  of  incapacity  like  the  diplomacy  that 
gave  Bulgaria  and  Turkey  to  Germany.  Labour 
has  not  the  name  of  Gallipoli  to  wear  on  its  party 
colours  ;  the  Goeben  and  the  Breslau  did  not  es- 
cape with  it  at  the  Admiralty  ;  none  of  its  leaders 
intrigued  with  any  general  against  his  superiors; 
it  did  not  turn  Ireland's  offered  help  into  enmity 
in  the  hour  of  need.  What  of  that,  though  ? 
Liberals  and  Conservatives,  too,  might  not  have 
failed  yet  if  they  had  not  been  tested.  As  likely 
as  not  that  the  Labour  chiefs,  too,  would  show, 
at  a  pinch,  the  old  vice  of  the  others — live  and 
act  in  a  visionary  world  of  their  own,  the  world 
as  they  would  have  liked  to  have  it,  not  the  world 
in  which  rough  work  and  righting  and  starving  go 
on  and  the  people  who  make  it  go  round  are  not 
politicians. 

IIO 


'WARE    POLITICIANS 

IV 

A  century  of  almost  unbroken  European  peace 
— unbroken,  that  is,  by  wars  hugely  destructive — 
had  built  up  insensibly  in  men's  minds  a  conscious- 
ness of  an  unbounded  general  stability  in  the  polit- 
ical as  well  as  in  the  physical  world.  The  crust 
of  the  political  globe  seemed  to  have  caked,  on  the 
whole,  almost  as  hard  and  cool  as  that  of  the 
elderly  earth.  It  felt  as  if  it  were  so  firm  that 
we  could  safely  play  the  fool  on  it,  as  boys  jump 
on  the  ice  of  a  pond  and  defy  it  to  break  under 
them.  So  an  immense  tolerance  of  political  rub- 
bish had  grown  up.  On  decade  after  decade  of 
indulgence  the  man  of  booming  phrases  and  gran- 
diosely noble  professions  had  swelled  into  a  mar- 
vel of  inflation  surpassing  any  barking  frog  at  the 
Zoo.  That  doing  of  hard  and  plain  work  well, 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  right  living  and  success 
in  men  or  nations,  had  grown  almost  dull  in  the 
sight  of  a  people  who  took  too  seriously  the  trum- 
petings  and  naggings  of  the  various  fashionable 
schools  of  virtuosi  in  political  blatancy.  It  would 
not  be  common  sense  to  suppose  that  no  psycho- 
logical change  of  any  moment  would,  in  any  case, 
have  been  wrought  by  a  passage  from  that  sub- 
stantially stable  world  into  a  world  in  which  the 

III 


DISENCHANTMENT 

three  great  empires  of  Continental  Europe  have 
been  ground  to  dust  like  Ypres.  Anyhow,  the 
adventure  of  finding  our  cooled  and  solid  earth 
turning  once  more  into  a  ball  of  fire  under  the 
foot  would  not  have  left  the  state  of  our  minds 
quite  as  it  had  been.  They  are  all  the  more 
changed  now  that  most  of  us  feel  we  have  pulled 
through  the  scrape,  scorched  and  battered,  by 
our  own  sweat,  and  not  by  the  leadership  of  those 
to  whom  we  had  too  lazily  given  the  places  of 
mark  in  that  rather  childish  old  world  before  the 
smash  came. 

Some  of  the  chief  ingredients  in  the  new  temper 
are  a  more  vigilant  scepticism;  a  new  impatience 
of  strident  enunciations  of  vague,  venerable,  polit- 
ical principles;  a  rough  instinctive  application  of 
something  like  the  new  philosophy  of  pragmatism 
to  all  questions;  and  an  elated  sense  of  the  speed 
and  completeness  with  which  institutions  and 
powers  apparently  founded  on  rock  can  be  scoured 
away.  Great  masses  of  men  have  become  more 
freely  critical  of  the  claims  of  institutions  and 
political  creeds  and  parties  which  they  used  to 
accept  without  much  scrutiny.  It  is  not  a  temper 
that  need  be  regarded  with  terror  or  reprobation. 
In  itself  it  is  neither  good  nor  bad.  It  is  the  raw 
material  of  either  good  or  evil,  accordingly  as  it 

112 


'WARE    POLITICIANS 

is  guided — of  barren  destruction  or  of  bold  repair 
and  improvement.  But  it  is  formidable.  For  men 
who  have  seen  cities  pounded  to  rubble,  men  who 
with  little  aid  or  guidance  from  their  own  rulers 
have  chased  emperors  from  their  thrones,  are 
pretty  fully  disengaged,  at  last,  from  the  English- 
man's old  sense  of  immutable  fixity  in  institutions 
which  he  may  find  irksome  or  worthless.  "  There's 
comfort  yet.  They  are  assailable."  If  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  has  been  knocked  into  smithereens, 
what  public  nuisance  need  remain? 


113 


CHAPTER     VII 

"CAN'T   BELIEVE   A   WORD" 

I 

IF  you  cannot  hit  or  kick  during  a  fight,  at  any 
rate  you  can  spit.  But,  to  be  happy  In  this 
arm  of  the  service,  you  have  to  feel  sure  that 
the  adversary  Is  signally  fit  to  be  spat  upon. 
Hence,  on  each  side  in  every  war,  the  civilian  wlll- 
to-believe  that  the  other  side  are  a  set  of  ogres, 
every  man  of  them.  What  a  capital  fiend  the 
Boer,  the  man  like  Botha  or  Smuts,  was  made  out 
to  be  during  the  last  Boer  War!  He  abused  the 
white  flag,  he  sawed  a  woman  In  two,  he  advanced 
behind  screens  of  niggers;  O,  he  was  a  great  fel- 
low! In  1870  French  civilians  laid  freely  to  their 
souls  the  flattering  unction  that  the  Prussians  mur- 
dered their  prisoners.  Strong  in  what  was  at 
bottom  the  same  joyous  faith,  German  civilians 
told  you  that  French  officers  usually  broke  their 
parole.  A  few  choice  spirits  will  even  carry  this 
fond  observance  into  the  milder  climate  of  sport. 
A  boy  of  this  kidney,  while  looking  on  at  a  vital 
house  match,  will  give  his  mind  ease  by  telling  a 
friend  what  "  a  lot  of  stinkers  "  the  other  house 
are.  A  follower  of  Cambridge  cricket,  a  man  of 
fifty,  in  whom  you  might  expect  the  choler  of 
youth    to   have   cooled,   has   been    found   musing 

114 


"CAN'T    BELIEVE    A    WORD" 

darkly  over  a  large  photograph  of  an  Oxford 
eleven.  They  seemed  to  me,  as  is  the  way  of  these 
heroes,  to  lack  nothing  of  outward  charm  except 
the  light  of  intellect  in  the  eye.  But  "  Look  at 
them !  "  he  observed  with  conviction.  "  The 
hangdog  expressions  I  The  narrow,  ill-set  Mon- 
gol eyes!  The  thin,  cruel  lips!  Prejudice  apart, 
would  you  like  to  meet  that  gang  in  a  quiet  place 
on  a  dark  night?"  From  these  sombre  reflections 
he  seemed  to  derive  a  sort  of  pasture. 

Little  doubt,  then,  as  to  what  had  to  come  when 
five  of  the  greatest  nations  on  earth  were  suddenly 
rolling  over  and  under  each  other  in  the  dust. 
While  their  armies  saw  to  the  biting,  the  snarling 
was  done  with  a  will  by  the  press  of  Berlin  and 
Vienna,  Petrogad,  Paris,  and  London.  That  we 
were  all  fighting  foul,  every  man,  was  the  burden 
of  the  strain.  Phone  and  anti-phone,  the  choric 
hymn  of  detraction  swelled;  if  this  had  been  an 
age  of  simpler  faith  there  might  have  been  seri- 
ous fear  lest  the  music  should  reach  the  ear  of 
some  Jove  sitting  at  his  nectar;  what  if  he  should 
say  in  a  rage  that  those  nasty  little  beasts  were  at 
it  again,  and  throw  such  a  comet  down  on  the 
earth  as  would  settle  the  hash  of  us  all?  But  no 
such   fears  troubled  Europe.     And   then   policy, 

115 


DISENCHANTMENT 

viewing  these  operations  of  instinct,  was  moved 
to  cut  in.  Official  propaganda  began,  and  one  of 
its  stock  lines  was  to  help  in  stoking  these  fires  in 
the  non-combatant  heart. 

II 

Some  of  the  fuel  to  hand  was  fine.  The  German 
command  fed  the  best  of  it  all  into  our 
bunkers,  gratis.  It  owned  that  its  "  frightful- 
ness  "  plan  was  no  slip,  no  "  indiscretion  of  a  sub- 
ordinate," but  a  policy  weighed  and  picked  out — 
worse  than  that,  an  embodied  ethical  doctrine.  A 
Frenchman,  when  he  is  cross  with  our  English 
virtue,  will  say  that  none  of  us  can  steal  a  goose 
without  saying  he  does  it  for  the  public  good. 
But  the  fey  rulers  of  Germany  could  not  even 
be  content  to  say  it  was  an  act  of  moral  beauty 
to  sink  the  Lusitania  or  to  burn  Louvain.  They 
must  go  on  to  boast  that  these  scrubby  actions 
were  pieces  of  sound,  hard  thinking,  the  only  ten- 
able conclusions  to  impregnable  syllogisms.  Be- 
sides man's  natural  aversion  to  cruel  acts,  they 
thus  incurred  his  still  more  universal  distaste  for 
pedants.  They  delivered  themselves  into  our 
hand.  They  were  beautiful  butts,  ready  made, 
like  the  learned  elderly  lady  in  Roderick  Random, 

ii6 


♦'CAN'T    BELIEVE    A    WORD" 

whose  bookish  philosophy  made  her  desire  to 
"  drag  the  parent  by  the  hoary  hair,"  and  to  "  toss 
the  sprawling  infant  on  her  spear." 

But  man,  rash  man,  must  always  be  trying  to  go 
one  better  than  the  best.  With  this  thing  of 
beauty  there  for  our  use,  crying  out  to  be  used, 
some  of  our  propagandists  must  needs  go  beyond 
it  and  try  to  make  out  that  the  average  German 
soldier,  the  docile  blond  with  yellow  hair,  long 
skull,  and  blue,  woolgathersome  eyes,  who 
swarmed  in  our  corps  cages  during  the  last  two 
years  of  the  war,  craving  for  some  one,  anyone, 
to  give  him  an  order,  was  one  of  the  monsters 
who  hang  about  the  gates  of  Vergil's  Hell.  If 
you  had  to  make  out  a  good  hanging  case  against 
Germany  could  you,  as  Hamlet  asks  his  injudi- 
cious mother,  on  that  fair  mountain  cease  to  feed 
and  batten  on  this  moor?  And  yet  some  of  us 
did.  The  authentic  scarecrow,  the  school  of 
thought  that  ruled  the  old  German  State,  was  not 
used  for  half  of  what  it  was  worth.  But  the  word 
went  forth  that  any  redeeming  traits  in  the  indi- 
vidual German  conscript  were  better  hushed  up. 
When  he  showed  extreme  courage  in  an  attack,  not 
much  must  be  made  of  it.  When  he  behaved 
well  to  a  wounded  Englishman,  it  must  be  hidden. 

117 


DISENCHANTMENT 

A  war  correspondent  who  mentioned  some  chival- 
rous act  that  a  German  had  done  to  an  English- 
man during  an  action  received  a  rebuking  wire 
from  his  employer,  "  Don't  want  to  hear  about 
any  nice,  good  Germans." 

Even  in  the  very  temple  of  humourless  shabbi- 
ness  comedy  may  contrive  to  keep  up  a  little 
shrine  of  her  own,  and  on  this  forlorn  altar  the 
dread  of  "  crying  up  anything  German "  laid, 
now  and  then,  an  undesigned  offering.  One 
worthy  field  censor  was  suddenly  taken  aback  by 
a  dangerous  flaw  in  a  war  correspondent's  exult- 
ant account  of  a  swiftly  successful  British  attack. 
"  Within  ten  minutes  from  zero,"  I  think  the  cor- 
respondent had  written,  "  our  men  were  sitting 
at  ease  on  what  had  been  the  enemy's  parapet, 
smoking  good  German  cigars."  "  Hullo!  "  said 
the  censor,  *'  this  won't  do.  '  Good  German 
cigars.  Good  German  cigars!  No!  'Good' 
must  come  out."  And  come  out  it  did.  Like  the 
moral  of  his  troops,  like  the  generalship  of  his 
chiefs,  the  foeman's  tobacco  had  to  be  bad.  It 
was  the  time  when  some  of  our  patriotic  pundits 
found  out  that  Mommsen's  Roman  history  was 
all  wrong,  and  that  Poppo  did  not  half  know 
his  Thucydides. 

ii8 


"CAN'T  BELIEVE  A  WORD" 
III 
Of  all  this  kind  of  swordsmanship  the  most 
dashing  feat  was  the  circulation  of  the  "  corpse 
factory  "  story.  German  troops,  it  was  written 
in  part  of  our  Press,  had  got,  in  certain  places 
near  their  front,  a  proper  plant  for  boiling  down 
the  fat  of  their  own  dead.  It  was  not  said 
whether  the  product  was  to  be  used  as  a  food, 
or  as  a  lubricant  or  illuminant  only.  Chance 
brought  me  into  one  of  the  reputed  seats  of  this 
refinement  of  frugality.  It  was  on  ground  that 
our  troops  had  just  taken,  in  1918.  At  Bellicourt 
the  St.  Quentin  Canal  goes  into  a  long  tunnel. 
Some  little  way  in  from  its  mouth  you  could  find, 
with  a  flash-lamp,  a  small  doorway  cut  in  the 
tunnel's  brick  wall,  on  the  tow-path  side  of  the 
canal.  The  doorway  led  to  the  foot  of  a  narrow 
staircase  that  wound  up  through  the  earth  till  it 
came  to  an  end  in  a  room  about  twenty  feet  long. 
It,  too,  was  subterranean,  but  now  its  darkness 
was  pierced  by  one  sharp-edged  shaft  of  sunlight 
let  in  through  a  neat  round  hole  cut  in  the  five 
or  six  feet  of  earth  above.  Loaves,  bits  of  meat, 
and  articles  of  German  equipment  lay  scattered 
about,  and  two  big  dixies  or  cauldrons,  like  those 
in  which  we  stewed  our  tea,  hung  over  two  heaps 

119 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  cold  charcoal.  Eight  or  ten  bodies,  lying  pell- 
mell,  nearly  covered  half  of  the  floor.  They 
showed  the  usual  effects  of  shell-fire.  Another 
body,  disembowelled  and  blown  almost  to  rags, 
lay  across  one  of  the  dixies  and  mixed  with  the 
puddle  of  coffee  that  It  contained.  A  quite 
simple  case.  Shells  had  gone  Into  cook-houses 
of  ours,  long  before  then,  and  had  messed  up  the 
cooks  with  the  stew. 

An  Australian  sergeant,  off  duty  and  poking 
about,  like  a  good  Australian,  for  something  to 
see,  had  come  up  the  stairs,  too.  He  had  heard 
the  great  fat-boiling  yarn,  and  how  this  was  the 
latest  seat  of  the  industry.  Sadly  he  surveyed 
the  disappointing  scene.  Ruefully  he  noted  the 
hopelessly  normal  nature  of  all  the  proceedings 
that  had  produced  It.  Then  he  broke  the  silence 
In  which  we  had  made  our  several  inspections. 
"  Can't  believe  a  word  you  read,  sir,  can  you?  " 
he  said  with  some  bitterness.  Life  had  failed  to 
yield  one  of  its  advertised  marvels.  The  Press 
had  lied  again.  The  propagandist  myth  about 
Germans  had  cracked  up  once  more.  "  Can't 
believe  a  word  you  read  "  had  long  been  becoming 
a  kind  of  catch-phrase  in  the  army.  And  now 
another  good  man  had  been  duly  confirmed  in  the 
faith,  ordained  as  a  minister  of  the   faith,  that 

120 


"CAN'T    BELIEVE    A    WORD" 

whatever  your  pastors  and  masters  tell  you  had 
best  be  assumed  to  be  just  a  bellyful  of  east  wind. 

IV 

Partly  it  came  of  the  nature — which  could  not 
be  helped  by  that  time — of  war  correspondence. 
In  the  first  months  of  the  war  our  General  Staff, 
being  what  we  had  made  it,  treated  British  war 
correspondents  as  pariah  dogs.  They  might  es- 
cape arrest  so  long  as  they  kept  out  of  sight; 
that  was  about  the  sum  of  their  privileges.  Long 
before  the  end  of  the  war  the  Chiefs  of  Staff  of 
our  several  armies  received  them  regularly  on  th^ 
eve  of  every  battle,  explained  to  them  the  whole 
of  our  plans  and  hopes,  gave  them  copies  of  our 
most  secret  objective  and  barrage  maps;  every 
perilous  secret  we  had  was  put  into  their  keep- 
ing. A  little  later  still  an  Army  Commander 
would  murmur,  with  very  little  indistinctness,  if 
he  thought  the  war  correspondents  had  not  been 
writing  enough  about  his  army  of  late.  After  the 
Armistice  Sir  Douglas  Haig  made  them  a  speech 
of  thanks  and  praise  on  the  great  bridge  over 
the  Rhine  at  Cologne,  and  at  the  Peace  all  the 
regular  pariah  dogs  were  offered  knighthoods. 

The  Regular  Army  had  set  out  by  taking  a 

121 


DISENCHANTMENT 

war  correspondent  to  be,  ex  officio,  a  low  fellow 
paid  to  extract  kitchen  literature  from  such  private 
concerns  of  the  military  profession  as  wars.  It 
harboured  the  curious  notion  that  it  would  be 
possible  in  this  century  to  feed  the  nation  at 
home  on  communiques  from  G.H.Q.  alone  or 
eked  out  with  "  Eye-Witness  "  stuff — official 
"  word-painting  "  by  some  Regular  Officer  with  a 
tincture  of  letters.  With  that  power  of  learning 
things,  only  just  not  too  late,  which  distinguishes 
our  Regular  Army  from  the  Bourbons,  it  presently 
saw  that  this  plan  had  broken  down.  About  the 
same  time  the  Regular  Army  began  to  recognise 
in  the  abhorred  war  correspondent  a  man  whom 
it  had  known  at  school,  and  who  had  gone  to  the 
university  about  the  time  when  it,  the  Army,  was 
going  into  the  Army  Class,  That  was  enough. 
Foul  as  was  his  profession,  still  he  might  be  a 
decent  fellow;  he  might  not  want  to  injure  his 
country. 

When  these  reflections  were  dawning  slowly 
over  the  Regular  Army  mind  it  happened — Sir 
Douglas  Haig  having  a  mind  himself — that  his 
Chief  of  Intelligence  was  a  fully  educated  man 
with  a  good  fifty  per  cent,  more  of  brains,  imagi- 
nation, decision,  and  initiative  than  the  average 

122 


"CAN'T    BELIEVE    A    WORD" 

of  his  fellow-Regulars  on  the  Staff.  He  knew 
something  of  the  Press  at  first  hand.  Being  a 
Scotsman,  he  regarded  writers  and  well-read 
people  with  interest  and  not  with  alarm.  Under 
his  command  the  policy  of  helping  the  Press  rose 
to  its  maximum.  War  correspondents  were  given 
the  "  status,"  almost  the  rank,  of  officers.  Actual 
officers  were  detailed  to  see  to  their  comfort,  to 
pilot  them  about  the  front,  to  secure  their  friendly 
treatment  by  all  ranks  and  at  all  headquarters. 
Never  were  war  correspondents  so  helped, 
shielded  and  petted  before.  And,  almost  without 
an  exception,  they  were  good  men.  Only  one  or 
two  black  sheep  of  the  trade  would  try  to  make 
a  reader  believe  that  they  had  seen  things  which 
they  had  not.  The  general  level  of  personal 
and  professional  honour,  of  courage,  public  spirit, 
and  serious  enterprise,  was  high.  No  average 
Staff  Officer  could  talk  with  the  average  British 
correspondent  without  feeling  that  this  was  a 
sound  human  being  and  had  a  better  mind  than 
his  own — that  he  knew  more,  had  seen  more,  and 
had  been  less  deadened  by  the  coolie  work  of  a 
professional  routine.  When  once  known,  the  war 
correspondents  were  trusted  and  liked — by  the 
Staff. 

123 


DISENCHANTMENT 

V 

There  lay  the  trouble.  They  lived  in  the  Staff 
world,  its  joys  and  its  sorrows,  not  in  the  combat- 
ant world.  The  Staff  was  both  their  friend  and 
their  censor.  How  could  they  show  it  up  when  it 
failed?  One  of  the  first  rules  of  field  censor- 
ship was  that  from  war  correspondents  "  there 
must  be  no  criticism  of  authority  or  command  "; 
how  could  they  disobey  that?  They  would  visit 
the  front  now  and  then,  as  many  Staff  Officers 
did,  but  it  could  be  only  as  afternoon  callers  from 
one  of  the  many  mansions  of  G.H.Q.,  that  heaven 
of  security  and  comfort.  When  autumn  twilight 
came  down  on  the  haggard  trench  world  of  which 
they  had  caught  a  quiet  noon-day  glimpse  they 
would  be  speeding  west  in  Vauxhall  cars  to 
lighted  chateaux  gleaming  white  among  scatheless 
woods.  Their  staple  emotions  before  a  battle 
were  of  necessity  akin  to  those  of  the  Staff,  the 
racehorse-owner  or  trainer  exalted  with  brilliant 
hopes,  thrilled  by  the  glorious  uncertainty  of  the 
game,  the  fascinating  nicety  of  every  preparation, 
and  feeling  the  presence  of  horrible  fatigues  and 
the  nearness  of  multitudinous  deaths  chiefly  as  a 
dim,  sombre  background  that  added  importance 
to  the  rousing  scene,  and  not  as  things  that  need 

124 


♦'CAN'T    BELIEVE    A    WORD" 

seriously   cloud   the   spirit   or  qualify   delight  in 
a  plan. 

"  Our  casualties  will  be  enormous,"  a  General 
at  G.H.Q.  said  with  the  utmost  serenity  on  the 
eve  of  one  of  our  great  attacks  in  19 17.  The 
average  war  correspondent — there  were  golden 
exceptions — insensibly  acquired  the  same  cheerful- 
ness in  face  of  vicarious  torment  and  danger.  In 
his  work  it  came  out  at  times  in  a  certain  jaunti- 
ness  of  tone  that  roused  the  fighting  troops  to 
fury  against  the  writer.  Through  his  despatches 
there  ran  a  brisk  implication  that  iregimental 
officers  and  men  enjoyed  nothing  better  than  "go- 
ing over  the  top  " ;  that  a  battle  was  just  a  rough, 
jovial  picnic;  that  a  fight  never  went  on  long 
enough  for  the  men;  that  their  only  fear  was  lest 
the  war  should  end  on  this  side  of  the  Rhine. 
This,  the  men  reflected  in  helpless  anger,  was 
what  people  at  home  were  offered  as  faithful 
accounts  of  what  their  friends  in  the  field  were 
thinking  and  suffering. 

Most  of  the  men  had,  all  their  lives,  been 
accepting  "  what  it  says  'ere  in  the  paper  "  as 
being  presumptively  true.  They  had  taken  the 
Press  at  its  word  without  checking.  Bets  had  been 
settled  by  reference  to  a  paper.  Now,  in  the 
biggest  event  of  their  lives,  hundreds  of  thousands 

125 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  men  were  able  to  check  for  themselves  the  truth 
of  that  workaday  Bible.  They  fought  in  a  battle 
or  raid,  and  two  days  after  they  read,  with  jeers 
on  their  lips,  the  account  of  "  the  show  "  in  the 
papers.  They  felt  they  had  found  the  Press  out. 
The  most  bloody  defeat  in  the  history  of  Britain, 
a  very  world's  wonder  of  valour  frustrated  by 
feckless  misuse,  of  regimental  glory  and  Staff 
shame,  might  occur  on  the  Ancre  on  July  i,  1916, 
and  our  Press  come  out  bland  and  copious  and 
graphic,  with  nothing  to  show  that  we  had  not 
had  quite  a  good  day — a  victory  really.  Men 
who  had  lived  through  the  massacre  read  the 
stuff  open-mouthed.  Anything,  then,  could  figure 
as  anything  else  in  the  Press — as  its  own  opposite 
even.  Black  was  only  an  aspect  of  white.  With 
a  grin  at  the  way  he  must  have  been  taken  in  up 
to  now,  the  fighting  soldier  gave  the  Press  up. 
So  it  comes  that  each  of  several  million  ex-soldiers 
now  reads  every  solemn  appeal  of  a  Government, 
each  beautiful  speech  of  a  Premier  or  earnest 
assurance  of  a  body  of  employers  with  that  maxim 
on  guard  in  his  mind — "  You  can't  believe  a  word 
you  read." 


126 


CHAPTER     VIII 

THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 


TO  fool  the  other  side  has  always  been 
fair  in  a  game.  Every  fencer  or  boxer 
may  feint.  A  Rugby  football  player 
"  gives  the  dummy  "  without  any  shame.  In 
cricket  a  bowler  is  justly  valued  the  more  for 
masking  his  action. 

In  war  your  licence  to  lead  the  other  fellow 
astray  is  yet  more  ample.  For  war,  though  it 
may  be  good  sport  to  some  men,  is  not  a  mere 
sport.  In  sport  you  are  not  "out  to  win  "  except 
on  certain  terms  of  courtesy  and  handsomeness. 
Who  would  take  pride  in  a  race  won  by  a  fluke? 
At  Henley,  a  long  time  ago,  there  were  five  or 
six  scullers  in  for  the  Diamonds.     One  of  them, 

L ,  was  known  to  be  far  the  best  man  in  the 

race.      In   the   first  heat   he   was   drawn   against 

A ,  of  Oxford,  about  the  best  of  the  others. 

L had  one  fault — a  blind  eye;  and  it  often 

made  him  steer  a  bad  course.    Before  the  two  had 

raced  for  fifty  yards  L blundered  out  of  his 

course,  crashed  into  A ,   and  capsized  him. 

The  rules  of  boat-racing  are  clear:  L had 

done  for  himself.     A ,  who  was  now  swim- 
ming, had  only  to  look  up  to  the  umpire's  launch 

127 


DISENCHANTMENT 

and  hold  up  a  hand.    A  nod  would  have  been  the 

reply,  and  the  heat  would  have  been  A 's,  and 

the    final   heat,    in    all    likelihood,    too.      A 

looked  well  away  from  the  umpire  and  kept  his 
hands  down,  got  back  into  his  boat  and  said  to 
his  contrite  opponent,   "Start  again  here,  sir?" 

A was  decisively  beaten,  and  never  came  so 

near  to  winning  the  Diamonds  again. 

Of  course  he  was  right,  the  race  being  sport. 
He  had  "  loved  the  game  beyond  the  prize  ";  he 
had,  like  Cyrano,  emporte  son  panache;  he  had 
seen  that  in  sport  the  thing  to  strive  for  is  prowess 
itself,  and  not  its  metallic  symbol.  But  the  prize 
of  victory  in  war  is  no  symbol;  it  is  the  thing 
itself,  the  real  end  and  aim  of  all  that  you  do 

and  endure.     If  A had  been  sculling  not  for 

a  piece  of  silversmith's  work  but  for  the  righting 
of  a  wronged  nation  or  for  the  reassertion  of 
public  right  throughout  Europe,  not  only  would 
he  have  been  morally  free  to  take  a  lucky  fluke 
when  he  got  it :  he  would  not  have  been  morally 
free  to  reject  it.  In  war  you  have  to  "  play  to 
win  " — words  of  sinister  import  in  sport.  Pot- 
hunting,  unhonoured  in  sport,  is  a  duty  in  war, 
where  the  pot  is,  perhaps,  the  chance  of  a  free 
life  for  your  children. 

Hence  your  immemorial  right  to  fall  on  your 
128 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

enemy  where  he  is  weak,  to  start  before  he  is 
ready,  to  push  him  out  of  the  course,  to  jockey 
him  on  to  the  rails,  to  use  against  him  all  three 
of  Bacon's  recipes  for  deceiving.  A  good  spy  will 
lie  to  the  last,  and  in  war  a  prisoner  may  lie  like 
a  saint  and  hero.  With  unmistakable  glee  the 
Old  Testament  tells  us  of  Gideon's  excellent  prac- 
tical fib  with  the  crockery  and  trumpets.  Even 
the  Wooden  Horse  of  the  Greeks  has  long  ceased 
to  raise  moral  questions.  The  pious  Aeneas,  cer- 
tainly, called  it  a  foul.  But  what  did  he  do  him- 
self, when  he  got  a  good  opening?  Went,  as  the 
Irish  say,  beyond  the  beyonds  and  fought  in  an 
enemy  uniform.  Ruses  of  war  and  war  lies  are 
as  ancient  as  war  itself,  and  as  respectable.  The 
most  innocent  animals  use  them;  they  shammed 
dead  in  battle  long  before  Falstaff. 

The  only  new  thing  about  deception  in  war  is 
modern  man's  more  perfect  means  for  its  practice. 
The  thing  has  become,  in  his  hand,  a  trumpet 
more  efficacious  than  Gideon's  own.  When  Sinon 
set  out  to  palm  off  on  the  Trojans  the  false  news 
of  a  Greek  total  withdrawal,  that  first  of  Intelli- 
gence officers  made  a  venture  like  that  of  early 
man,  with  his  flint-headed  arrow,  accosting  a  lion. 
Sinon's  pathetic  little  armament  of  yarns,  to  be 
slung  at  his  proper  peril,  was  frailer  than  David's 

129 


DISENCHANTMENT 

five  stones  from  the  brook.  Modern  man  is  far 
better  off.  To  match  the  Lewis  gun  with  which  he 
now  fires  his  solids,  he  has  to  his  hand  the  news- 
paper Press,  a  weapon  which  fires  as  fast  as  the 
Lewis  itself,  and  is  almost  as  easy  to  load  when- 
ever he  needs,  in  his  wars,  to  let  fly  at  the  enemy's 
head  the  thing  which  is  not. 

He  has  this  happiness,  too:  however  often  he 
fires,  he  can,  in  a  sense,  never  miss.  He  knows 
that  while  he  is  trying  to  feed  the  enemy  with 
whatever  it  may  be  bad  for  him  to  read  the  enemy 
will  be  trying  just  as  hard  to  leave  no  word  of 
it  unread.  As  busily  as  your  enemy's  telescopes 
will  be  conning  your  lines  in  the  field,  his  Intelli- 
gence will  be  scrutinising  whatever  is  said  in  your 
Press,  worrying  out  what  it  means  and  which  of 
the  things  that  it  seems  to  let  out  are  the  traps 
and  which  are  the  real,  the  luminous,  priceless 
slips  made  in  unwariness.  What  the  Sphinx  was 
to  her  clientele,  what  the  sky  Is  to  mountain- 
climbers  and  sailors,  your  Press  is  to  him:  an  end- 
less riddle,  to  be  interrogated  and  interpreted 
for  dear  life.  His  wits  have  to  be  at 
work  on  it  always.  Like  a  starved  rat  in  a 
house  where  rat-poison  is  laid,  he  can  afford 
neither  to  nibble  a  crumb  that  has  got  the  virus  on 
it,  nor  yet  to  leave  uneaten  any  clean  crumb  that 

130 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

has  fallen  accidentally  from  a  table.  Do  not 
thrilling  possibilities  open  before  you? 

What  cannot  you  and  I  perform  upon 

The  unguarded  Duncan?     What  not  put  upon 

His  spongy  officers? 

— that  is,  if  Duncan  be  really  unguarded  enough 
to  "  ravin  down  his  proper  bane,"  like  a  dutiful 
rat,  and  his  officers  spongy  enough  to  sop  up, 
according  to  plan,  the  medicated  stuff  that  you 
give  them. 

Ill 

It  is  the  common  habit  of  nations  at  war  to 
ascribe  to  the  other  side  all  the  cunning,  as  if  the 
possession  of  a  Ulysses  were  some  sort  of  dis- 
credit. Happily  for  us  our  chosen  Ulysses  in 
France,  at  the  most  critical  time,  was  of  the  first 
order.  But  no  soldier  can  go  far  ahead  of  his 
time;  he  has  to  work  in  it  and  with  it.  And  so 
the  rich  new  mine  of  Intelligence  work  through 
the  Press  was  not  worked  by  either  side,  in  the 
Great  War,  for  all  it  was  worth.  Only  a  few 
trial  borings  were  made;  experimental  shafts  were 
sunk  into  the  seam,  and  good,  promising  stuff  was 
brought  to  the  top. 

Here  are  a  couple  of  samples.  Some  readers 
131 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  popular  science,  as  It  Is  called,  may  have  been 
shocked  to  see  In  a  technical  journal,  rather  late 
In  the  war,  a  recklessly  full  description  of  our 
"  listening  sets  " — the  apparatus  by  which  an 
enemy  telephone  message  Is  overheard  In  the  field. 
"  Why,"  they  must  have  thought,  "  this  is  giving 
away  one  of  our  subtlest  devices  for  finding  out 
what  the  enemy  Is  about.  The  journal  ought  to 
be  prosecuted."  The  article  had  really  come  from 
G.H.Q.     It  was  the  last  thrust  In  a  long  duel. 

When  the  war  opened  the  Germans  had  good 
apparatus  for  telephonic  eavesdropping.  We  had, 
as  usual,  nothing  to  speak  of.  The  most  distinctly 
traceable  result  was  the  annihilation  of  our  first 
attack  at  Ovillers,  near  Albert,  early  In  July  19 16. 
At  the  Instant  fixed  for  the  attack  our  front  at 
the  spot  was  smothered  under  a  bombardment 
which  left  us  with  no  men  to  make  It.  A  few 
days  after  when  we  took  Ovillers,  we  found  the 
piece  of  paper  on  which  the  man  with  the  German 
"  listening  set  "  had  put  down,  word  for  word, 
our  orders  for  the  first  assault.  Then  we  got  to 
work.  We  drew  our  own  telephones  back,  and 
we  perfected  our  own  "  listening  sets "  till  the 
enemy  drew  back  his,  further  and  further,  giving 
up  more  and  more  of  ease  and  rapidity  of  com- 
munication In  order  to  be  safe.     At  last  a  point 

132 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

was  reached  at  which  he  had  backed  right  out  of 
hearing.  All  hope  of  pushing  him  back  further 
still,  by  proving  in  practice  that  we  could  still 
overhear,  was  now  gone.  All  that  was  left  to  do 
was  to  add  the  effects  of  a  final  bluff  to  the  previ- 
ous effects  of  the  real  strength  of  our  hand.  And 
so  there  slipped  into  a  rather  out-of-the-way  Eng- 
lish journal  the  indiscretion  by  which  the  reach  of 
our  electric  ears  was,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  not 
under-stated.  Few  people  in  England  might  no- 
tice the  article.  The  enemy  could  be  trusted  to 
do  so. 

When  the  Flanders  battle  of  July  31,  19 17, 
was  about  to  be  fought,  we  employed  the  old  ruse 
of  the  Chinese  attack.  We  modernised  the  trick 
of  medieval  garrisons  which  would  make  a  show 
of  getting  ready  to  break  out  at  one  gate  when 
a  real  sally  was  to  be  made  from  another.  The 
enemy  was  invited  to  think  that  a  big  attack  was 
at  hand.  But  against  Lens,  and  not  east  of  Ypres. 
Due  circumstantial  evidence  was  provided.  There 
were  audible  signs  that  a  great  concentration  of 
British  guns  were  cautiously  registering,  west  of 
Lens.  A  little  scuffle  on  that  part  of  the  front 
elicited  from  our  side  an  amazing  bombardment — 
apparently  loosed  in  a  moment  of  panic.  I  fancy 
a   British   Staff  Officer's  body — to  judge  by  his 

^33 


DISENCHANTMENT 

brassard  and  tabs — may  have  floated  down  the 
Scarpe  into  the  German  lines.  Interpreted  with 
German  thoroughness,  the  maps  and  papers  upon 
it  might  easily  betray  the  fact  that  Lens  was  the 
objective.  And  then  a  really  inexcusable  indiscre- 
tion appeared — just  for  a  moment,  and  then  was 
hushed  up — in  the  London  Press.  To  an  acute 
German  eye  it  must  have  been  obvious  that  this 
composition  was  just  the  inconsequent  gassing  of 
some  typically  stupid  English  General  at  home  on 
leave;  he  was  clearly  throwing  his  weight  about, 
as  they  say,  without  any  real  understanding  of 
anything.  The  stuff  was  of  no  serious  value, 
except  for  one  parenthetic,  accidental  allusion  to 
Lens  as  the  mark.  As  far  as  I  know,  this  ebulli- 
tion of  babble  was  printed  in  only  one  small  edi- 
tion of  one  London  paper.  Authority  was  then 
seen  to  be  nervously  trying,  as  Uncle  Toby  ad- 
vised, "  to  wipe  it  up  and  say  no  more  about  it." 
Lest  it  should  not  be  observed  to  have  taken  this 
wise  precaution  some  fussy  member  of  Parliament 
may  have  asked  in  the  House  of  Commons  how 
so  outrageous  a  breach  of  soldierly  reticence  had 
occurred.  And  was  there  no  control  over  the 
Press?  It  all  answered.  The  Germans  kept  their 
guns  in  force  at  Lens,  and  their  counter  barrage 

134 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

east  of  Ypres  was  so  much  the  lighter,  and  our 
losses  so  much  the  less. 

IV 

If  we  did  these  things  in  the  green  leaf,  what 
might  we  not  do  in  the  dry?  Mobilize  our  whole 
Press,  conscribe  it  for  active  service  under  a  single 
control,  a — let  us  be  frank — a  Father-General 
of  Lies,  the  unshaming  strategic  and  tactical  lies 
of  "  the  great  wars  "  which  "  make  ambition 
virtue,"  and  sometimes  make  mendacity  a  vir- 
tue too?  Coach  the  whole  multitudinous  or- 
chestra of  the  Press  to  carry  out  the  vast  concep- 
tions of  some  consummate  conductor,  splendide 
mendax}  From  each  instrument  under  his  baton 
this  artist  would  draw  its  utmost  contributive  aid 
to  immense  schemes  of  concerted  delusiveness, 
the  harping  of  the  sirens  elaborated  into  Wagner- 
ian prodigies  of  volume  and  complexity. 

As  you  gaze  from  the  top  of  a  tree  or  a  tower 
behind  your  own  front,  in  a  modern  war,  all  the 
landscape  beyond  it  looks  as  if  man  had  perished 
from  the  earth,  leaving  his  works  behind  him.  It 
all  looks  strangely  vacant  and  dead,  the  roofs  of 
farms  and  the  spires  of  churches  serving  only  to 
deepen  your  sense  of  this  blank  deletion  of  man, 
as  the  Roman  arches  enhance  the  vacuous  stillness 

135 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  the  Campagna.  Your  Intelligence  Corps  has  to 
convert  this  first  impression,  this  empty  page,  into 
a  picture,  built  up  line  by  line,  dot  by  dot,  of  the 
universe  of  activities  that  are  going  on  out  there. 
Its  first  and  easiest  task  is  to  mark  out  correctly 
the  place  where  every  enemy  unit  is,  each  division, 
each  battery,  each  railhead,  aerodrome,  field  hos- 
pital and  dump.  Next  it  has  to  mark  each  move- 
ment of  each  of  these,  the  shiftings  of  the  various 
centres  of  gravity,  the  changes  in  the  relative 
density  and  relative  quality  of  troops  and  guns 
at  various  sectors,  the  increase,  at  any  sector,  of 
field  hospitals,  the  surest  harbingers  of  heavy  at- 
tacks. The  trains  on  all  lines  must  be  counted, 
their  loads  calculated.  Next  must  be  known  in 
what  sort  of  spirits  the  enemy  is,  in  the  field  and 
also  at  home.  Do  the  men  believe  in  their  of- 
ficers? Do  the  men  get  confident  letters  from 
their  civilian  friends?  Do  they  send  cheerful  ones 
back?  Is  desertion  rare  and  much  abhorred?  Or 
so  common  that  men  are  no  longer  shot  for  it 
now?  So  you  may  go  on  enumerating  until  it 
strikes  you  that  you  are  simply  drifting  into  an 
inventory  of  all  the  details  of  the  enemy's  war- 
time life,  in  the  field  and  at  home.  And  then  you 
understand. 

For  what  you  want  to  know,  in  order  to  beat 
136 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

him,  is  no  less  than  this — to  see  him  steadily  and 
see  him  whole.  In  the  past  we  have  talked  of 
information  "  of  military  value  "  as  distinct  from 
other  information.  But  all  information  about 
either  side  is  of  military  value  to  the  other.  News 
of  the  outbreak  or  settlement  of  a  strike  in  a 
Welsh  coalfield  was  of  military  value  to  Luden- 
dorff.  News  of  the  day's  weather  in  Central 
Europe  was  of  military  value  to  Sir  Douglas 
Haig,  News  of  anything  that  expressed  in  any 
degree  the  temper  of  London  or  Berlin,  of  Mun- 
ich or  Manchester,  helped  to  eke  out  that  ac- 
curate vision  of  an  enemy's  body  and  mind  which 
is  the  basis  of  success  in  combat.  A  black  dot, 
of  the  size  of  a  pin-head,  may  seem,  when  looked 
at  alone,  to  give  no  secret  away.  But  when  the 
same  dot  is  seen,  no  longer  in  isolation,  but  as 
part  of  a  pen-and-ink  drawing,  perhaps  it  may 
leap  into  vital  prominence,  showing  now  as  the 
pupil  of  the  eye  that  completes  a  whole  portrait, 
gives  its  expression  to  a  face  and  identifies  a  sitter. 
Throughout  the  Great  War  our  own  Press  and 
that  of  the  Germans  were  each  pouring  out,  for 
the  undesigned  benefit  of  their  enemy,  substan- 
tially correct  descriptions  of  everything  in  the 
war  life  of  their  respective  nations,  except  a  few 
formal  military   and  naval  secrets   specially   re- 

137 


DISENCHANTMENT 

served  by  the  censors.  Each  nation  fought,  on  the 
whole,  with  the  other  standing  well  out  in  the 
light,  with  no  inscrutability  about  its  countenance. 
If  we  were  ever  again  in  such  risk  of  our  national 
life,  would  we  not  seriously  try  to  make  ourselves 
an  enigma?  Or  would  we  leave  this,  as  we  have 
left  some  other  refinements  of  war,  to  the  other 
side  to  introduce  first? 


Suppose  us  again  at  war  with  a  Power  less 
strong  at  sea  than  ourselves.  If  we  should  want 
its  fleet  to  come  out  and  fight  in  the  open,  why  not 
evoke,  some  fine  morning,  from  every  voice  in  our 
daily  press,  a  sudden  and  seemingly  irrepressible 
cry  of  grief  and  rage  over  the  unconcealable  news 
— the  Censor  might  be  defied  by  the  way — that 
our  Grand  Fleet,  while  ranging  the  seas,  had 
struck  a  whole  school  of  drift  mines  and  lost  half 
its  numbers?  Strategic  camouflage,  however, 
would  go  far  beyond  such  special  means  to  special 
ends  as  that.  It  would,  as  a  regular  thing,  de- 
range the  whole  landscape  presented  to  enemy 
eyes  by  our  Press.  There  was  in  the  war  a  French 
aerodrome  across  which  the  French  camouflage 
painters  had  simply  painted  a  great  white  high- 
road:  it   ran   across   hangars,   huts,   turf,   every- 

138 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

thing;  and  everything  was  amazingly  obliterated 
by  it.  Across  our  real  life,  as  seen  under  the 
noonday  rays  of  publicity  in  ordinary  times,  the 
supreme  controller  might  draw  some  such  enor- 
mous lines  of  falsification. 

Most  of  the  fibs  that  we  used  in  the  war  were 
mere  nothings,  and  clumsy  at  that.  When  the 
enemy  raided  our  trenches  in  the  dead  winter  sea- 
son, took  fifty  prisoners,  and  did  as  he  liked  for 
a  while — so  much  as  he  liked  that  a  court  of  in- 
quiry was  afterwards  held  and  a  colonel  deprived 
of  his  command — we  said  in  our  official  com- 
munique that  a  hostile  raiding  party  had  "  entered 
our  trenches  "  but  was  "  speedily  driven  out,  leav- 
ing a  number  of  dead."  When  civilian  moral  at 
home  was  going  through  one  of  its  occasional 
depressions,  we  gave  out  that  it  was  higher  than 
ever.  We  did  not  officially  summon  from  the 
vasty  deep  the  myth  about  Russian  soldiers  in 
England.  But  when  it  arose  out  of  nothing  we 
did  make  some  use  of  it.  These  were,  however, 
little  more  than  bare  admissions  of  the  principle 
that  truthfulness  in  war  is  not  imperative.  Falsi- 
fication was  tried,  but  it  was  not  "  tried  out." 
Like  really  long-range  guns,  the  kindred  of 
"  Bertha,"  it  came  into  use  only  enough  to  sug- 

139 


DISENCHANTMENT 

gest  what  another  world-war  might  be.     Vidimus 
tantiim.    And  then  the  war  ended. 

Under  a  perfected  propaganda  system  the 
whole  surface  presented  by  a  country's  Press  to 
the  enemy's  Intelligence  would  be  a  kind  of 
painted  canvas.  The  artist  would  not  merely  be 
reticent  about  the  positions,  say,  of  our  great 
training  camps.  He  would  create,  by  indirect 
evidence,  great  dummy  training  camps.  In  the 
field  we  had  plenty  of  dummy  aerodromes,  with 
hangars  complete  and  a  few  dummy  machines 
sprawling  outside,  to  draw  enemy  bomb-fire.  At 
home  we  would  have  dummy  Salisbury  Plains  to 
which  a  guarded  allusion  would  peep  out  here 
and  there  while  the  new  unity  of  command  over 
the  Press  would  delete  the  minutest  clue  to  the 
realities.  Episodes  like  that  of  the  famous  Lans- 
downe  letter  would  not  be  left  for  nature  to 
bungle.  If  at  any  time  such  an  episode  seemed 
likely  to  touch  any  diplomatic  spring  with  good 
strategic  effect,  it  would  happen  at  that  moment 
and  no  other.  Otherwise  it  would  not  happen, 
so  far  as  any  trace  of  it  in  the  Press  could  betray. 
By-elections,  again,  their  course  and  result,  may 
tell  an  enemy  much  of  what  your  people  are 
thinking.  But,  for  military  purposes,  there  is 
always  some  particular  thing  which  you  want  him 

140 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

to  believe  them  to  be  thinking.  So  you  would 
not  leave  it  to  the  capricious  chances  of  an  actual 
election  to  settle  whether  he  should  be  led  to  be- 
lieve this  or  not.  You  would  see  to  it.  Just  as 
you  camouflage  your  real  guns  and  expose  dummy 
guns,  so  you  would  obliterate  from  the  Press  all 
trace  of  your  real  elections  and  offer  to  view,  at 
the  times  that  best  suited,  dummy  elections,  ad 
hoc  elections,  complete  in  all  their  parts. 

We  have  imagined  a  case  in  which  it  would  be 
our  interest  to  raise  false  confidence  in  the  enemy, 
perhaps  to  draw  a  hurried  attack  on  our  shores  at 
a  time  of  our  own  choosing.  Then,  if  the  whole 
of  our  Press  is  held  in  our  hand  like  a  fiddle, 
ready  to  take  and  give  out  any  tune,  what  should 
prevent  us  from  letting  fall,  in  sudden  distress, 
a  hundred  doleful,  forced  admissions  that  the 
strain  has  proved  too  great,  the  smash  has  come, 
the  head  of  the  State  is  in  hiding  from  his  troops, 
the  Premier  in  flight,  naval  officers  hanging  from 
modern  equivalents  to  the  yard-arm,  Ministers 
and  Commanders-in-Chief  shaking  their  fists  in 
one  another's  faces  ?  Or  take  the  opposite  case, 
that  you  mean  to  attack  in  force,  in  the  field.  Here 
you  would  add  to  the  preliminary  bombardment 
of  your  guns  such  a  bombardment  of  assertion  and 
insinuation,  not  disprovable  before  "  zero  "  hour, 

141 


DISENCHANTMENT 

as  has  never  yet  been  essayed;  plausible  proofs 
from  neutral  quarters  that  the  enemy's  troops  are 
being  betrayed  by  their  politicians  behind,  that  ty- 
phus has  broken  out  among  the  men's  homes,  that 
their  children  are  dying  like  flies,  and  some  of 
the  mothers,  insane  with  famine  and  grief,  are  eat- 
ing the  dead  in  hope  of  nursing  the  living.  Oh, 
you  could  say  a  great  deal. 

And  you  could  deliver  your  messages,  too.  The 
enemy's  command  might  try  to  keep  the  contents 
of  your  Press  from  reaching  his  troops.  But, 
thanks  to  the  aeroplane,  you  can  circularize  the 
enemy's  troops  almost  as  easily  as  traders  can  can- 
vass custom  at  home.  You  can  flood  his  front 
line  with  leaflets,  speeches,  promises,  rumours,  and 
caricatures.  You  can  megaphone  to  it.  Only  in 
recent  years  has  human  ingenuity  thought  of  con- 
verting the  older  and  tamer  form  of  political  strife 
into  the  pandemonic  '*  stunt  "  of  a  "  whirlwind 
election."  Shall  war  not  have  her  whirlwind  can- 
vasses no  less  renowned  than  those  of  peace? 
Some  rather  shame-faced  passages  of  love  there 
have  been  between  us  and  the  Rumour  of  Shake- 
speare, the  person  "  painted  full  of  tongues,"  who 
"  stuffs  the  ears  of  men  with  false  reports,"  to 
the  advantage  of  her  wooers.     Why  not  espouse 

142 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

the  good  lady  right  out?    Make  an  honest  woman 
of  her? 


VI 

Perhaps  you  would  shrink  back.  Perhaps  at 
any  rate  you  do  so  now,  when  for  the  moment  this 
great  implement  is  not  being  offered  to  you,  to 
take  or  leave,  at  an  instant  crisis  of  your  country's 
fate.  You  feel  that  even  in  such  a  case  you  would 
stand  loftily  aloof  in  your  cold  purity?  You  would 
disclaim  as  a  low,  unknightly  business  the  utter- 
ing of  such  base  coinage  as  cooked  news,  whatever 
your  proud  chastity  may  cost  anyone  else  ?  Or  ar- 
rive, perhaps,  at  the  same  result  by  a  different 
route,  and  make  out  to  yourself  that  really  it  pays, 
in  the  end,  to  be  decent;  that  clean  chivalry  is  a 
good  investment  at  bottom,  and  that  a  nation  of 
Galahads  and  Bayards  is  sure  to  come  out  on  top, 
on  the  canny  reckoning  that  the  body  housing  a 
pure  heart  has  got  the  strength  of  ten?  That  is 
one  possible  course.  And  the  other  is  to  accept, 
with  all  that  it  implies,  the  doctrine  that  there  is 
one  morality  for  peace  and  another  morality  for 
war;  that  just  as  in  war  you  may  with  the  clear- 
est conscience  stab  a  man  in  the  back,  or  kick  him 
in  the  bowels,  in  spite  of  all  the  sportsmanship  you 
learnt  at  school,  so  you  may  stainlessly  carry  de- 

143 


DISENCHANTMENT 

ception  to  lengths  which  in  peace  would  get  you 
blackballed  at  a  club  and  cut  by  your  friends. 

It  may  be  too  much  to  hope  that,  whichever  of 
these  two  paths  we  may  choose,  we  shall  tread  it 
with  a  will.     We  have  failed  so  much  in  the  way 
of  what  Germany  used  to  call   "  halfness,"   the 
fault   of    Macbeth,    the    wish    to   hunt   with   the 
hounds  while  we  run  with  the  hare,  that  it  would 
be  strange  if  we  did  not  still  try  to  play  Bayard 
and  Ulysses  as  one  man  and  succeed  in  combining 
the   shortcomings   of   an   inefficient   serpent  with 
those  of  a  sophisticated  dove.  If  we  really  went  the 
whole  serpent  the  first  day  of  any  new  war  would 
see  a  wide,  opaque  veil  of  false  news  drawn  over 
the  whole  face  of  our  country.    Authority  playing 
on  all  the  keys,  white  and  black,  of  the  Press  as 
upon  one  piano,  would  give  the  listening  enemy  the 
queerest  of  Ariel's  tunes  to  follow.     All  that  we 
did,  all  that  we  thought,  would  be  bafflingly  falsi- 
fied.    The  whole  landscape  of  life  in  this  island, 
as  it  reflects  itself  in  the  waters  of  the  Press,  would 
come  out  suddenly  altered  as  far  past  recognition 
as  that  physical  landscape  amid  which  it  is  passed 
has  been  changed  by  a  million  years  of  sunshine, 
rain,  and  frost.     The  whole  sky  would  be  dark- 
ened with  flights  of  strategic  and  tactical  lies  so 
dense  that  the  enemy  would  fight  in  a  veritable 

144 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

"  fog  of  war  "  darker  than  London's  own  No- 
vember brews,  and  the  world  would  feel  that  not 
only  the  Angel  of  Death  was  abroad,  but  the 
Angel  of  Delusion  too,  and  would  almost  hear  the 
beating  of  two  pairs  of  wings. 

VII 

Well — and  then  ?  Any  weapon  you  use  in  a  war 
leaves  some  bill  to  be  settled  in  peace,  and  the 
Propaganda  arm  has  its  cost  like  another.  To  say 
so  is  not  to  say,  without  more  ado,  that  it  should 
not  be  used.  Its  cost  should  be  duly  cast  up,  like 
our  other  accounts;  that  is  all.  We  all  agree — 
with  a  certain  demur  from  the  Quakers — that  one 
morality  has  to  be  practised  in  peace  and  another 
in  war;  that  the  same  bodily  act  may  be  wrong 
in  the  one  and  right  in  the  other.  So,  to  be  per- 
fect, you  need  to  have  two  gears  to  your  morals, 
and  drive  on  the  one  gear  in  war  and  on  the  other 
in  peace.  While  you  are  on  the  peace  gear  you 
must  not  even  shoot  a  bird  sitting.  At  the  last 
stroke  of  some  August  midnight  you  clap  on  the 
war  gear  and  thenceforth  you  may  shoot  a  man 
sitting  or  sleeping  or  any  way  you  can  get  him, 
provided  you  and  he  be  soldiers  on  opposite  sides. 

Now,  in  a  well-made  car,  in  the  prime  of  its  life, 
there  is  nothing  to  keep  you  from  passing  straight 

145 


DISENCHANTMENT 

and  conclusively  from  one  gear  to  another.  The 
change  once  made,  the  new  gear  continues  in  force 
and  does  not  wobble  back  fitfully  and  incalculably 
into  the  old.  But  in  matters  of  conduct  you  can- 
not, somehow,  drive  long  on  one  gear  without  let- 
ting the  other  become  noticeably  rusty,  stiff,  and 
disinclined  to  act.  It  was  found  in  the  Great  War 
that  after  a  long  period  of  peace  and  general  sat- 
uration with  peace  morals  it  took  some  time  to  re- 
lease the  average  English  youth  from  his  indur- 
ated distaste  for  stabbing  men  in  the  bowels.  Con- 
versely it  has  been  found  of  late,  in  Ireland  and 
elsewhere,  that,  after  some  years  of  effort  to  get 
our  youths  off  the  no-homicide  gear,  they  cannot 
all  be  got  quickly  back  to  it  either,  some  of  them 
still  being  prone  to  kill,  as  the  French  say,  paisible- 
ment,  with  a  lightness  of  heart  that  embarrasses 
statesmen. 

We  must,  to  be  on  the  conservative  side,  assume 
that  the  same  phenomenon  would  attend  a  post- 
war effort  to  bring  back  to  the  truth  gear  of  peace 
a  Press  that  we  had  driven  for  some  years  on  the 
war  gear  of  untruthfulness.  Indeed,  we  are  not 
wholly  left  to  assumption  and  speculation.  Dur- 
ing the  war  the  art  of  Propaganda  was  little  more 
than  born.  The  various  inspired  articles-with-a- 
purpose,  military  or  political,  hardly  went  beyond 

146 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

the  vagitus,  the  earhest  cry  of  the  new-born  meth- 
od, as  yet 

An  infant  cr>'ing  in  the  night, 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry. 

Yet  for  more  than  three  years  since  the  Armistice 
our  rulers  have  continued  to  issue  to  the  Press,  at 
our  cost  as  Blue  Books  and  White  Papers,  long 
passages  of  argument  and  suggestion  almost  fan- 
tastically different  from  the  dry  and  dignified  offi- 
cial publications  of  the  pre-war  days.  English 
people  used  to  feel  a  sovereign  contempt  for  the 
"  semi-official  "  journalism  of  Germany  and  Rus- 
sia. But  the  war  has  left  us  with  a  Press  at  any 
rate  intermittently  inspired.  What  would  be  left 
by  a  war  in  which  Propaganda  had  come  of  age 
and  the  State  had  used  the  Press,  as  camouflaging 
material,  for  all  it  was  worth? 

It  used  at  one  time  to  be  a  great  joke — and  a 
source  of  gain  sometimes — among  little  boys  to 
take  it  as  a  benign  moral  law  that  so  long  as  you 
said  a  thing  "  over  the  left,"  it  did  not  matter 
whether  it  was  true  or  not.  If,  to  gain  your  pri- 
vate ends,  or  to  make  a  fool  of  somebody  else,  you 
wanted  to  utter  a  fib,  all  that  you  had  to  do  was  to 
append  to  it  these  three  incantatory  words,  under 
your  breath,  or  indeed  without  any  sound  or  move 

147 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  your  lips  at  all,  but  just  to  yourself  in  the  ses- 
sion of  sweet  silent  thought.  Then  you  were 
blameless.  You  had  cut  yourself  free,  under  the 
rules,  from  the  vulgar  morality.  War  confers  on 
those  who  wage  it  much  the  same  self-dispensing 
power.  They  can  absolve  themselves  of  a  good 
many  sins.  Persuade  yourself  that  you  are  at  war 
with  somebody  else  and  you  find  your  moral  liberty 
expanding  almost  faster  than  you  can  use  it.  An 
Irishman  in  a  fury  with  England  says  to  himself 
"  State  of  war — that's  what  it  is,"  and  then  finds 
he  can  go  out  and  shoot  a  passing  policeman  from 
behind  a  hedge  without  the  discomfort  of  feeling 
base.  The  policeman's  comrades  say  to  them- 
selves "  State  of  war — that's  what  it  has  come  to," 
and  go  out  and  burn  some  other  Irishman's  shop 
without  a  sense  of  doing  anything  wrong,  either. 
They  all  do  it  "  over  the  left."  They  have  stolen 
the  key  of  the  magical  garden  wherein  you  may  do 
things  that  are  elsewhere  most  wicked  and  yet  en- 
joy the  mental  peace  of  the  soldier  which  passeth 
all  understanding. 

To  kill  and  to  burn  may  be  sore  temptations  at 
times,  but  not  so  besetting  to  most  men  as  the 
temptation  to  He  is  to  public  speakers  and  writers. 
Another  frequent  temptation  of  theirs  is  to  live  in 
a  world  of  stale  figures  of  speech,  of  flags  nailed  to 

148 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

the  mast,  of  standing  to  one's  guns,  of  deaths  in 
last  ditches,  of  quarter  neither  asked  nor  given. 
It  is  their  hobby  to  figure  their  own  secure,  squab- 
blesome  lives  in  images  taken  from  war.  And 
their  httle  excesses,  their  breaches  of  manners,  and 
even,  sometimes,  of  actual  law,  are  excused,  as  a 
rule,  in  terms  of  virile  disdain  for  anything  less 
drastic  and  stern  than  the  morals  of  the  real  war- 
fare which  they  know  so  little.  We  have  to  think 
in  what  state  we  might  leave  these  weak  brethren 
after  a  long  war  in  which  we  had  practised  them 
hard  in  lying  for  the  public  good  and  also  in  telling 
themselves  it  was  all  right  because  of  the  existence 
of  a  state  of  war.  State  of  war!  Why,  that  is 
what  every  excitable  politician  or  journalist  de- 
clares to  exist  all  the  time.  To  the  wild  party  man 
the  party  which  he  hates  is  always  "  more  deadly 
than  any  foreign  enemy."  All  of  us  could  men- 
tion a  few  politicians,  at  least,  to  whom  the  Great 
War  was  merely  a  passing  Incident  or  momentary 
interruption  of  the  more  burningly  authentic  wars 
of  Irish  Orange  and  Green,  or  of  English  Labour 
and  Capital. 

VIII 

Under  the  new  dispensation  we  should  have  to 
appoint  on  the  declaration  of  war,  if  we  had  not 

149 


DISENCHANTMENT 

done  it  already,  a  large  Staff  Department  of  Press 
Camouflage.  Everything  is  done  best  by  those 
who  have  practised  it  longest.  The  best  inventors 
and  disseminators  of  what  was  untrue  in  our  hour 
of  need  would  be  those  who  had  made  its  manu- 
facture and  sale  their  trade  in  our  hours  of  ease. 
The  most  disreputable  of  successful  journalists 
and  "  publicity  experts  "  would  naturally  man  the 
upper  grades  of  the  war  staff.  The  reputable  jour- 
nalists would  labour  under  them,  trying  their  best 
to  conform,  as  you  say  in  drill,  to  the  movements 
of  the  front  rank.  For  in  this  new  warfare  the 
journalist  untruthful  from  previous  habit  and 
training  would  have  just  that  advantage  over  the 
journalist  of  character  which  the  Regular  soldier 
had  over  the  New  Army  officer  or  man  in  the  old. 
He  would  be,  as  Mr.  Kipling  sings, 

A  man  that's  too  good  to  be  lost  you, 
A  man  that  is  'andled  and  made, 

A  man  that  will  pay  what  'e  cost  you 
In  learnin'  the  others  their  trade. 

After  the  war  was  over  he  would  return  to  his 
trade  with  an  immense  accession  of  credit.  He 
would  have  been  decorated  and  publicly  praised 
and  thanked.  Having  a  readier  pen  than  the 
mere  combatant  soldiers,  he  would  probably  write 

150 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

a  book  to  explain  that  the  country  had  really  been 
saved  by  himself,  though  the  fighting  men  were, 
no  doubt,  gallant  fellows.  He  would,  in  all  like- 
lihood, have  completed  the  disengagement  of  his 
mind  from  the  idea  that  public  opinion  is  a  thing 
to  be  dealt  with  by  argument  and  persuasion,  ap- 
peals to  reason  and  conscience.  He  would  feel 
surer  than  ever  that  men's  and  women's  minds  are 
most  strongly  moved  not  by  the  leading  articles  of 
a  paper  but  by  its  news,  by  what  they  may  be  led 
to  accept  as  "  the  facts."  So  the  practice  of  col- 
ouring news,  of  ordering  reporters  to  take  care 
that  they  see  only  such  facts  as  tell  in  one  way, 
would  leap  forward.  For  it  would  have  the  po- 
tent support  of  a  new  moral  complacency.  When 
a  man  feels  that  his  tampering  with  truth  has 
saved  civilization,  why  should  he  deny  himself,  in 
his  private  business,  the  benefit  of  such  moral  re- 
flections as  this  feeling  may  suggest? 

Scott  gives,  in  Woodstock^  an  engaging  picture 
of  the  man  who  has  "  attained  the  pitch  of  believ- 
ing himself  above  ordinances."  The  independent 
trooper,  Tomkins,  finds  his  own  favourite  vices 
fitting  delightfully  into  an  exalted  theory  of  moral 
freedom.  In  former  days,  he  avows,  he  had  been 
only  "  the  most  wild,  malignant  rakehell  in  Ox- 

151 


DISENCHANTMENT 

fordshlre."  Now  he  Is  a  saint,  and  can  say  to 
the  girl  whom  he  wants  to  debauch : 

Stand  up,  foolish  maiden,  and  listen ;  and  know,  in  one 
word,  that  sin,  for  which  the  spirit  of  man  is  punished 
with  the  vengeance  of  heaven,  lieth  not  in  the  corporal 
act,  but  in  the  thought  of  the  sinner.  Believe,  lovely 
Phoebe,  that  to  the  pure  all  acts  are  pure,  and  that  sin  is 
in  our  thought,  not  in  our  actions,  even  as  the  radiance 
of  the  day  is  dark  to  a  blind  man  but  seen  and  enjoyed 
by  him  whose  eyes  receive  it.  To  him  who  is  but  a  novice 
in  the  things  of  the  spirit  much  is  enjoined,  much  is  pro- 
hibited ;  and  he  is  fed  with  milk  fit  for  babes — for  him  are 
ordinances,  prohibitions,  and  commands.  But  the  saint  is 
above  all  these  ordinances  and  restraints.  To  him,  as  to 
the  chosen  child  of  the  house,  is  given  the  pass-key  to  open 
all  locks  which  withhold  him  from  the  enjoyment  of  his 
heart's  desire.  Into  such  pleasant  paths  will  I  guide  thee, 
lovely  Phoebe,  as  shall  unite  in  joy,  in  innocent  freedom, 
pleasures  which,  to  the  unprivileged,  are  sinful  and  pro- 
hibited. 

So  when  a  journalist  with  no  strong  original  pre- 
disposition to  swear  to  his  own  hurt  shall  have 
gained  high  public  distinction  by  his  fertility  in 
falsehoods  for  consumption  by  an  enemy  in  the 
field,  the  fishes  that  tipple  in  the  deep  may  well 
"  know  no  such  liberty  "  as  this  expert  in  fiction 
will  allow  himself  when  restored  to  his  own  more 
intoxicating  element. 

The  general  addition  of  prestige  to  the  contro- 
versial device  of  giving  false  impressions  and  rais- 

152 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

ing  false  issues  would  naturally  be  Immense.  To 
argue  any  case  merely  on  its  merits  and  on  the 
facts  would  seem  to  the  admirers  of  the  new  way 
a  kind  of  virtuous  imbecility.  In  what  great  in- 
dustrial dispute  or  political  campaign,  in  what 
struggle  between  great  financial  interests,  would 
both  sides,  or  either,  forego  the  use  of  munitions 
so  formidable?  Such  conflicts  might  almost 
wholly  cease  to  be  competitions  in  serious  argu- 
ment at  all;  they  might  become  merely  trials  of 
skill  in  fantastic  false  pretences,  and  of  expertness 
in  the  morbid  psychology  of  credulity. 

So  men  argued,  surmised  and  predicted,  talking 
and  talking  away  in  the  endless  hours  that  war 
gives  for  talking  things  out.  When  first  they  be- 
gan to  ask  each  other  why  so  many  lies  were  about, 
the  common  hypothesis,  based  on  prior  experience, 
was  that  they  must  be  meant  to  save  some  "  dud," 
up  above,  from  losing  his  job.  Then  they  came 
to  admit  there  was  something  more  in  it  than  that. 
Lies  had  a  good  enough  use  for  fooling  the  Ger- 
mans. A  beastly  expedient,  no  doubt;  acquies- 
cence in  lying  does  not  come  quite  so  easily  to  a 
workman  of  good  character  as  it  does  to  men  of 
a  class  in  which  more  numerous  formal  fibs  are 
kept  in  use  as  social  conveniences.  Still,  the  men 
were  not  cranks  enough  to  object.     "They  love 

153 


DISENCHANTMENT 

not  poison  that  do  poison  need."  The  men  had 
hated,  and  still  continued  to  hate,  the  use  of  poi- 
son gas,  too.  It  was  a  scrub's  trick,  like  vitriol- 
throwing.  But  who  could  have  done  without  it, 
when  once  the  Germans  began?  And  now  who 
could  object  to  the  use  of  this  printed  gas  either? 
Could  they,  in  this  new  warfare  of  propaganda, 
expect  their  country  to  go  into  action  armed  in 
a  white  robe  of  candour,  and  nothing  besides,  like 
a  maskless  man  going  forth  to  war  against  a  host 
assisted  by  phosgene  and  all  her  foul  sisters? 

It  was  a  clear  enough  case :  decency  had  to  go 
under.  But  it  was  hard  luck  not  to  be  able  to  know 
where  you  were.  Where  were  they?  If  all  the 
news  they  could  check  was  mixed  with  lies,  what 
about  all  the  rest,  which  they  were  unable  to 
check?  Was  it  likely  to  be  any  truer?  Why,  we 
might  be  losing  the  war  all  the  time,  everywhere! 
Who  could  believe  now  what  was  said  about  our 
catching  the  submarines?  Or  about  India's  being 
all  right?  And  how  far  would  you  have  to  go  to 
get  outside  the  lie  belt?  Could  our  case  for  going 
to  war  with  the  Germans  be  partly  lies  too? 
Beastly  idea  I 

How  would  it  be,  again,  when  we  came  to  play 
these  major  tricks  which  the  men  were  already 
discussing  as  likely  to  come  into  use?    Suppose  it 

154 


THE    DUTY    OF    LYING 

became  part  of  our  game  to  publish,  for  some  good 
strategical  reason,  news  of  a  naval  or  military 
disaster  to  ourselves,  the  same  not  having  hap- 
pened? To  take  in  the  enemy  this  lie  would  have 
to  take  in  our  own  people  too;  the  ruse  would  be 
given  away  if  the  Government  tried  to  tip  so  much 
as  a  wink  to  the  British  reader  of  the  British 
Press.  So  men's  friends  at  home  would  have  the 
agonies  of  false  alarms  added  to  their  normal  war- 
time miseries,  and  wives  might  be  widowed  twice 
and  mothers  of  one  son  made  childless  more  than 
once  before  the  truth  finally  overshadowed  their 
lives. 

And  then,  your  war  won,  there  would  be  that 
new  lie-infested  and  infected  world  of  peace.  In 
one  of  his  great  passages  Thucydides  tells  us  what 
happened  to  Greece  after  some  years  of  war  and 
of  the  necessary  war  morality.  He  says  that,  as 
far  as  veracity,  public  and  private,  goes,  the  peace 
gear  was  found  to  have  got  wholly  out  of  work- 
ing order  and  could  not  be  brought  back  into  use. 
"  The  meaning  of  words  had  no  longer  the  same 
relation  to  things,  but  was  changed  by  men  as  they 
thought  proper."  The  pre-war  hobby  of  being 
straight  and  not  telling  people  lies  went  clean  out 
of  fashion.  Anyone  who  could  bring  off  a  good 
stroke  of  deceit,  to  the  injury  of  some  one  whom 


DISENCHANTMENT 

he  disliked,  "  congratulated  himself  on  having 
taken  the  safer  course,  over-reached  his  enemy, 
and  gained  the  prize  of  superior  talent."  A  man 
who  did  not  care  to  use  so  sound  a  means  to  his 
ends  was  thought  to  be  a  goody-goody  ass.  War 
worked  in  that  way  on  the  soul  of  Greece,  in  days 
when  war  was  still  confined,  in  the  main,  to  the 
relatively  cleanly  practice  of  hitting  your  enemy 
over  the  head,  wherever  you  could  find  him.  The 
philosophers  in  our  dugouts  preserved  moderation 
when  they  expected  as  ugly  a  sequel  for  war 
in  our  age,  when  the  chivalrous  school  seems  to 
have  pretty  well  worked  itself  out  and  the  most 
promising  lines  of  advance  are  poison  gas  and 
canards.  But  the  survivors  among  them  are  not 
detached  philosophers  only.  They  act  in  the  new 
world  that  they  foresaw,  and  the  man  whose  word 
you  could  trust  like  your  own  eyes  and  ears,  eight 
years  ago,  has  come  back  with  the  thought  in  his 
mind  that  so  many  comrades  of  his  have  ex- 
pressed: "They  tell  me  we've  pulled  through  at 
last  all  right  because  our  propergander  dished  out 
better  lies  than  what  the  Germans  did.  So  I  say 
to  myself  '  If  tellin'  lies  is  all  that  bloody  good  in 
war,  what  bloody  good  is  tellin'  truth  in  peace?  '  " 


156 


CHAPTER     IX 

AUTUMN    COMES 


IN  the  autumn  of  19 17  the  war  entered  into  an 
autumn,  or  late  middle-age,  of  its  own.  "  Your 
young  men,"  we  are  told,  "  shall  see  visions, 
and  your  old  men  shall  dream  dreams."  The  same 
with  whole  armies.  But  middle-aged  armies  or 
men  may  not  have  the  mists  of  either  morning  or 
evening  to  charm  them.  So  they  may  feel  like 
Corot,  when  he  had  painted  away,  in  a  trance  of 
delight,  till  the  last  vapour  of  dawn  was  dried  up 
by  the  sun;  then  he  said,  "  You  can  see  everything 
now.  Nothing  is  left,"  and  knocked  off  work  for 
the  day.  There  was  no  knocking  off  for  the  army. 
But  that  feeling  had  come.  A  high  time  was  over, 
a  great  light  was  out;  our  eyes  had  lost  the  use 
of  something,  either  an  odd  penetration  that  they 
had  had  for  a  while,  or  else  an  odd  web  that  had 
been  woven  across  them,  shutting  only  ugliness 
out. 

The  feeling  was  apt  to  come  on  pretty  strong 
if  you  lived  at  the  time  on  the  top  of  the  little 
hill  of  Cassel,  west  of  Ypres.  The  Second  Army's 
Headquarters  were  there.  You  might,  as  some 
Staff  duty  blew  you  about  the  war  zone,  be  watch- 
ing at  daybreak  one  of  that  autumn's  many  dour 

157 


DISENCHANTMENT 

bouts  of  attrition  under  the  Passchendale  Ridge, 
In  the  mud,  and  come  back,  the  same  afternoon,  to 
sit  in  an  ancient  garden  hung  on  the  slope  of  the 
hill,  where  a  great  many  pears  were  yellowing  on 
the  wall  and  sunflowers  gazing  fixedly  into  the 
sun  that  was  now  failing  them.  All  the  corn  of 
French  Flanders  lay  cut  on  the  brown  plain  under 
your  eyes,  from  Dunkirk,  with  its  shimmering 
dunes  and  the  glare  on  the  sea,  to  the  forested 
hills  north  of  Arras.  Everywhere  lustre,  reverie, 
stillness;  the  sinking  hum  of  old  bees,  successful  in 
life  and  now  rather  tired;  the  many  windmills 
fallen  motionless,  the  aureate  light  musing  over 
the  aureate  harvest;  out  in  the  east  the  broken 
white  stalks  of  Poperinghe's  towers  pensive  in 
haze ;  and,  behind  and  about  you,  the  tiny  hill  city, 
itself  in  its  distant  youth  the  name-giver  and  prize 
of  three  mighty  battles  that  do  not  matter  much 
now.  All  these  images  or  seats  of  outlived  ar- 
dour, mellowed  now  with  the  acquiescence  of  time 
in  the  slowing  down  of  some  passionate  stir  in  the 
sap  of  a  plant  or  the  spirit  of  insects  or  men, 
joined  to  work  on  you  quietly.  There,  where  the 
earth  and  the  year  were  taking  so  calmly  the  end 
of  all  the  grand  racket  that  they  had  made  in  their 
prime,  why  not  come  off  the  high  horse  that  we, 
too,  in  that  ingenuous  season,  had  ridden  so  hard? 

158 


AUTUMN  COMES 

It  was  nrot  now  as  it  had  been  of  yore.    And  why 
pretend  that  it  was? 

II 

One  leaf  that  had  gone  pretty  yellow  by  now 
was  the  hope  of  perfect  victory — swift,  unsoured, 
unruinous,  knightly:  St.  George's  over  the  dragon, 
David's  over  Goliath.  Some  people  at  home  seem 
to  be  still  clinging  hard  to  that  first  pretty  vision 
of  us  as  a  gifted,  lithe,  wise  little  Jack  fighting 
down  an  unwieldy,  dastardly  giant.  But  troops 
in  the  field  become  realists.  Ours  had  seen  their 
side  visibly  swelling  for  more  than  two  years,  till 
Jack  had  become  a  heavier  weight  than  the  giant 
and  yet  could  not  finish  him  off.  We  knew  that 
our  allies  and  we  we  outnumbered  the  Germans 
and  theirs.  We  knew  we  were  just  as  well  armed. 
We  had  seen  Germans  advancing  under  our  fire 
and  made  no  mistake  about  what  they  were  worth. 
Our  first  vision  of  victory  had  gone  the  way  of  its 
frail  sister  dream  of  a  perfect  Allied  comradeship. 
French  soldiers  sneered  at  British  now,  and  Brit- 
ish at  French.  Both  had  the  same  derisive  note 
in  the  voice  when  they  named  the  "  Brav'  Beiges." 
Canadians  and  Australians  had  almost  ceased  to 
take  the  pains  to  break  it  to  us  gently  that  they 
were  the  "  storm  troops,"  the  men  who  had  to  be 

159 


DISENCHANTMENT 

sent  for  to  do  the  tough  jobs;  that,  out  of  all  us 
sorry  home  troops,  only  the  Guards  Division,  two 
kilted  divisions  and  three  English  ones  could  be 
said  to  know  how  to  fight.  The  English  let  us  down 
again";  "The  Tommies  gave  us  a  bad  flank,  as 
usual  " — these  were  the  stirring  things  you  would 
hear  if  you  called  upon  an  Australian  division  a 
few  hours  after  a  battle  in  which  the  lion  had 
fought  by  the  side  of  his  whelps.  Chilly,  autumnal 
things;  while  you  listened,  the  war  was  apparelled 
no  longer  in  the  celestial  light  of  its  spring. 

An  old  Regular  colonel,  a  man  who  had  done 
all  his  work  upon  the  Staff,  said,  at  the  time,  that 
"  the  war  was  settling  down  to  peace  conditions." 
He  meant  no  bitter  epigram.  He  was  indeed  un- 
feignedly  glad.  The  war  was  ceasing  to  be,  like  a 
fire  or  shipwreck,  a  leveller  of  ranks  which,  he  felt, 
ought  not  to  be  levelled.  Those  whom  God  had 
put  asunder  it  was  less  recklessly  joining  together. 
The  first  wild  generosities  were  cooling  off.  Not 
many  peers  and  heirs-apparent  to  great  wealth 
were  becoming  hospital  orderlies  now.  Since  the 
first  earthquake  and  tidal  wave  the  disturbed  so- 
cial waters  had  pretty  well  found  their  old  seemly 
levels  again;  under  conscription  the  sons  of  the 
poor  were  now  making  privates;  the  sons  of  the 
well-to-do   were   making  officers;   sanity  was   re- 

i6o 


AUTUMN  COMES 

turning.  The  Regular  had  faced  and  disarmed 
the  invading  hordes  of  19 14.  No  small  feat  of 
audacity,  either.  Think  what  the  shock  must  have 
been — what  it  would  be  for  any  profession,  just  at 
the  golden  prime  of  rich  opportunity  and  search- 
ing test,  to  be  overrun  of  a  sudden  by  hosts  of  keen 
amateurs,  many  of  them  quick-witted,  possibly 
critical,  some  of  them  the  best  brains  of  the  coun- 
try, most  of  them  vulgarly  void  of  the  old  pro- 
fessional habits  of  mind,  almost  indecently  ready 
to  use  new  and  outlandish  means  to  the  new  ends 
of  to-day. 

But  now  the  stir  and  the  peril  were  over.  The 
Old  Army  had  won.  It  had  scarcely  surrendered  a 
single  strong  point  or  good  billet;  Territorials  and 
New  Army  toiled  at  the  coolie  jobs  of  its  house- 
hold. It  had  not  even  been  forced,  like  kings  in 
times  of  revolution,  to  make  apparent  concessions, 
to  water  down  the  pure  milk  of  the  word.  It  had 
become  only  the  more  intensely  itself;  never  in  any 
war  had  commands  been  retained  so  triumphantly 
In  the  hands  of  the  cavalry  and  the  Guards,  the 
leaders  and  symbols  of  the  Old  Army  resistance 
to  every  inroad  of  mere  professional  ardour  and 
knowledge  and  strong,  eager  brains.  When  Sir 
Francis  Lloyd  relinquished  the  London  District 
Command  a  highly  composite  mess  in  France  dis- 

161 


DISENCHANTMENT 

cussed  possible  successors.  "Of  course,"  said  a 
Guards  colonel  gravely — and  he  was  a  guest  in 
the  Mess — "  the  first  point  is — he  must  be  a 
Guardsman."  Peace  conditions  returning,  you 
see;  the  peace  frame  of  mind;  the  higher  com- 
mands restored  to  their  ancient  status  as  property, 
"  livings,"  perquisites,  the  bread  of  the  children, 
not  to  be  given  to  dogs.  At  home,  too,  peace  con- 
ditions were  taking  heart  to  return.  The  scattered 
coveys  of  profiteers  and  job-hunters,  almost 
alarmed  by  the  first  shots  of  the  war,  had  long 
since  met  in  security;  "depredations  as  usual" 
was  the  word;  and  the  mutual  scalping  and  knifing 
of  politicians  had  ceased  to  be  shamefaced;  who 
could  fairly  expect  an  old  Regular  Army  to  prac- 
tise a  more  austere  virtue  than  merchant  princes 
and  statesmen? 

Ill 

Even  in  trenches  and  near  them,  where  most  of 
the  health  was,  time  had  begun  to  embrown  the 
verdant  soul  of  the  army.  "  Kitchener's  Army  " 
was  changing.  Like  every  volunteer  army,  his  had 
sifted  itself,  at  its  birth,  with  the  only  sieve  that 
will  riddle  out,  even  roughly,  the  best  men  to  be 
near  in  a  fight.  Till  the  first  of  the  pressed  men 
arrived  at  our  front,  a  sergeant  there,  when  he 

162 


AUTUMN  COMES 

posted  a  sentry  and  left  him  alone  in  the  dark, 
could  feel  about  as  complete  a  moral  certitude  as 
there  is  on  the  earth  that  the  post  would  not  be 
let  down.  For,  whatever  might  happen,  nothing 
inside  the  man  could  start  whispering  to  him 
"You  never  asked  to  be  here!  if  you  do  fail,  it 
isn't  your  doing," 

Nine  out  of  ten  of  the  conscripts  were  equally 
sound.  For  they  would  have  been  volunteers  if 
they  could.  The  tenth  was  the  problem;  the  more 
so  because  there  was  nothing  to  tell  you  which  was 
the  tenth  and  which  were  the  nine.  For  all  that 
you  knew,  any  man  who  came  out  on  a  draft,  from 
then  on,  might  be  the  exception,  the  literal-minded 
Christian  who  thought  it  wicked  to  kill  in  a  war; 
or  an  anti-nationalist  zealot  who  thought  us  all 
equally  fools,  the  Germans  and  us,  to  be  out  there 
pasturing  lice,  instead  of  busy  at  home  taking  the 
hide  off  the  bourgeois;  or  one  of  those  drift  wisps 
of  loveless  critical  mind,  attached  to  no  place  or 
people  more  than  another,  and  just  as  likely  as 
not  to  think  that  the  war  was  our  fault  and  that 
we  ought  to  be  beaten.  Riant  avenir!  as  a  French 
sergeant  said  when,  in  an  hour  of  ease,  we  were 
talking  over  the  nature  of  man,  and  he  told  me, 
in  illustration  of  its  diversity,  how  a  section  of  his 

163 


DISENCHANTMENT 

had  just  been  enriched  with   a  draft  of  neuras- 
thenic burglars. 

These  vulgar  considerations  of  military  expedi- 
ency never  seemed  to  cross  the  outer  rim  of  the 
consciousness  of  many  worthies  who  were  engaged 
at  home  in  shooing  the  reluctant  into  the  army.  If 
a  recalcitrant  seemed  to  be  lazy,  spiritless,  nerve- 
less, if  there  was  every  sign  of  his  making  a  spe- 
cially worthless  and  troubelsome  consumer  of  ra- 
tions in  a  trench,  then  a  burning  zeal  to  inflict  this 
nuisance  and  danger  on  some  unoffending  platoon 
in  France  seemed  to  invade  the  ordinary  military 
tribunal.  Report  said  that  the  satisfaction  of  this 
impulse  was  called,  by  the  possessed  persons, 
"  giving  Haig  the  men,"  and  sometimes,  with  a 
more  pungent  irony,  "  supporting  our  fellows  in 
the  trenches."  Non  tali  auxilio  nee  defensoribus 
istis.  Australia's  fellows  in  the  trenches  were 
suffered  to  vote  themselves  out  of  the  risk  of  get- 
ting any  support  of  the  kind.  Australia  is  a  de- 
mocracy. Ours  were  not  asked  whether  they 
wanted  to  see  their  trenches  employed  as  a  penal 
settlement  to  which  middle-aged  moralists  in  Eng- 
land might  deport,  among  other  persons,  those 
whom  they  felt  to  be  morally  the  least  beautiful  of 
their  juniors.  So  nothing  impeded  the  pious 
practice  of  "  laming  toads  to  be  toads."    For  the 

164 


AUTUMN  COMES 

shirker,  the  "kicker,"  the  "  lawyer,"  for  all  the 
types  of  undesirables  that  contribute  most  liberally 
to  the  wrinkled  appearance  of  sergeants,  those 
pious  men  had  the  nose  of  collectors.  Wherever 
there  was  a  spare  fifty  yards  of  British  front  to  be 
held,  they,  if  anyone,  could  find  a  man  likely  to  go 
to  sleep  there  on  guard,  or,  in  some  cyclonic  dis- 
turbance of  spirit,  to  throw  down  his  rifle  and  light 
out  for  the  coast,  across  country. 

Such  episodes  were  reasonably  few.  The  invet- 
erate mercy  that  guards  drunken  sailors  preserved 
from  the  worst  disaster  the  cranks  who  had  made 
a  virtue  of  giving  their  country  every  bad  soldier 
they  could.  And  the  abounding  mercy  of  most 
courts-martial  rendered  few  of  the  episodes  fatal 
to  individual  conscripts.  Nor,  indeed,  was  the 
growth  in  their  frequency  after  conscription 
wholly  due  to  the  more  fantastic  tricks  played  be- 
fore high  Heaven  by  some  of  the  Falstaffs  who 
dealt  with  the  Mouldies,  Shadows  and  Bull-calves. 
Conscription,  in  any  case,  must  be  dilution.  You 
may  get  your  water  more  quickly  by  throwing  the 
filter  away,  but  don't  hope  to  keep  the  quality 
what  it  was.  And  the  finer  a  New  Army  unit  had 
been,  to  begin  with,  the  swifter  the  autumnal 
change.  Every  first-rate  battalion  fighting  in 
France  or  Belgium  lost  its  whole  original  numbers 

i6s 


DISENCHANTMENT 

over  and  over  again.  First,  because  in  action  it 
spared  itself  less  than  the  poor  ones;  secondly,  be- 
cause the  best  divisions  rightly  got  the  hard  jobs. 
Going  out  in  the  late  autumn  of  19 15,  a  good  bat- 
talion with  normal  luck  might  have  nearly  half  its 
original  volunteer  strength  left  after  the  Battle 
of  the  Somme.  Drafts  of  conscripts  would  fill  up 
the  gap,  each  draft  with  a  listless  or  enigmatic 
one-tenth  that  volunteering  had  formerly  kept  at 
a  distance.  The  Battle  of  Arras  next  spring  might 
leave  only  twenty  per  cent  of  the  first  volunteers, 
and  the  autumn  battles  in  Flanders  would  pretty 
well  finish  their  business.  Seasons  returned,  but 
not  to  that  battalion  returned  the  spirit  of  delight 
in  which  it  had  first  learnt  to  soldier  together  and 
set  foot  together  in  France  and  first  marched 
through  darkness  and  ruined  villages  towards  the 
flaring  fair-ground  of  the  front.  While  a  New 
Army  battalion  was  still  very  young,  and  fully 
convinced  that  no  crowd  of  men  so  good  to  be  with 
had  ever  been  brought  together  before,  it  used 
to  be  always  saying  how  it  would  keep  things  up 
after  the  war.  No  such  genial  reunions  had  ever 
been  held  as  these  were  to  be.  But  now  the  few 
odd  men  that  are  left  only  write  to  each  other  at 
long  intervals,  feeling  almost  as  if  they  were  rais- 
ing their  voices  in  an  empty  church.    One  of  them 

166 


AUTUMN  COMES 

asks  another  has  he  any  idea  what  the  battahon 
was  like  after  Oppy,  or  Bourlon  Wood,  or  wher- 
ever their  own  knock-out  came.  Like  any  other 
battalion,  no  doubt — a  mere  G.C.M.  of  all  con- 
script battalions;  conscription  filed  down  all  spe- 
cial features  and  characters. 

Quick  waste  and  renewal  are  said  to  be  good 
for  the  body;  the  faster  you  burn  up  old  tissues, 
by  good  sweaty  work,  the  better  your  health; 
fresh  and  superior  tissue  is  added  unto  you  all  the 
more  merrily.  Capital,  too,  the  economists  say, 
must  be  swiftly  used  up  and  reborn,  over  and 
over  again,  to  do  the  most  good  that  it  can.  And 
then  there  is  the  case  of  the  phoenix — in  fact,  of 
all  the  birds  and  all  the  beasts  too,  for  all  evolu- 
tion would  seem  to  be  just  the  dying  of  something 
worse,  as  fast  as  it  can,  in  order  that  something 
better  may  live  in  its  place.  No  need  for  delay 
in  turning  your  anthropoid  apes  into  Shakespeares 
and  Newtons. 

But  what  if  you  found,  after  all  your  hard  work, 
that  not  all  the  deceased  cells  of  your  flesh  were 
replaced  by  new  cells  of  the  sort  you  would  like? 
If  some  of  your  good  golden  pounds  should  have 
perished  only  that  inconvertible  paper  might  live? 
If  out  of  your  phoenix's  ashes  only  a  common- 
place rooster  should  spring?     If  evolution  were 

167 


DISENCHANTMENT 

guyed  and  bedevilled  into  retrovolution,  a  process 
by  which  the  fittest  must  more  and  more  dwindle 
away  and  the  less  fit  survive  them,  and  species  be 
not  multiplied  but  made  fewer?  Something,  per- 
haps, of  the  sort  may  go  on  In  the  body  In  Its  old 
age,  or  in  roses  in  autumn.  It  must  go  on  in  a 
volunteer  army  when  It  Is  becoming  an  army  of 
conscripts  during  a  war  that  is  highly  lethal. 

IV 

The  fall  of  the  leaf  had  brought,  too,  a  sad 
shortage  of  heroes — of  highly-placed  ones,  for,  of 
course,  every  company  had  its  own,  authenticated 
beyond  any  proof  that  crosses  or  medals  could 
give.  A  few  very  old  Regular  privates  would 
say,  "Ah!  if  we  had  Buller  here!  "  Sir  Redvers 
Buller  has  always  remained,  in  lofty  disregard  of 
conclusive  disproof,  the  Caesar  or  Hannibal  of  the 
old  Regular  private,  who  sets  little  store  by  such 
heroes  of  Whitehall  and  Fleet  Street  as  Roberts 
and  Kitchener.  But  the  chiefs  of  to-day  left  men 
cold,  at  the  best.  The  name  of  at  least  one  was  a 
by-word.  Halg  was  a  name  and  no  more,  though 
a  name  immune  In  a  mysterious  degree  from  the 
general  scofl'ing  surmise  about  the  demerits  of 
higher  commands.  Few  subalterns  or  men  had 
seen  him.     No  one  knew  what  he  was  doing  or 

i68 


AUTUMN  COMES 

leaving  undone.  But  some  power,  not  ourselves, 
making  for  charity,  seemed  to  recommend  him  to 
mercy  in  everyone's  judgement;  as  if,  from  wher- 
ever he  was,  nameless  waves  of  some  sort  rippled 
out  through  an  uncharted  ether,  conveying  some 
virtue  exhaled  by  that  winning  incarnation  of 
honour,  courage,  and  kindness  who,  seen  and 
heard  in  the  flesh,  made  you  wish  to  find  in  him 
all  other  excellent  qualities  too.  The  front  line 
gave  him  all  the  benefit  of  every  doubt.  God  only 
knew,  it  said,  whether  he  or  somebody  else  would 
have  to  answer  for  Bullecourt  and  Serre.  It  might 
not  be  he  who  had  left  the  door  lying  open,  un- 
entered, for  two  nights  and  days,  when  the  lions 
had  won  the  battle  of  Arras  that  spring,  and  the 
asses  had  let  the  victory  slip  till  the  Germans 
crept  back  in  the  dark  to  the  fields  east  of  VImy 
from  which  they  had  fled  in  despair.  But  slow- 
ness to  judge  can  hardly  be  called  hero-worship  :  at 
most,  a  somewhat  sere  October  phase  of  that  ver- 
nal religion. 

One  of  the  heavenly  things  on  which  the  New 
Army  had  almost  counted,  in  its  green  faith,  was 
that  our  higher  commands  would  have  genius.  Of 
course,  we  had  no  right  to  do  it.  No  X  has  any 
right  to  ask  of  Y  that  Y  shall  be  Alexander  the 
Great  or  Bach  or  Rembrandt  or  Garrick,  or  any 

169 


DISENCHANTMENT 

kind  of  demonic  first-rater.  As  reasonably  send 
precepts  to  the  Leviathan  to  come  ashore.  Yet 
we  had  indulged  that  insane  expectation,  just  as 
we  had  taken  it  for  granted  that  this  time  the  na- 
tion would  be  as  one  man,  and  nobody  "  out  to  do 
a  bit  for  himself  on  the  quiet."  And  now  behold 
the  falling  leaf  and  no  Leviathan  coming  ashore 
in  response  to  our  May-Day  desires. 

Certainly  other  things,  highly  respectable,  came. 
The  Second  Army  Staff's  direction  of  that  au- 
tumn's almost  continuous  battles  was  of  a  compe- 
tence passing  all  British  precedents.  Leap-frog- 
ging waves  of  assault,  box  barrages,  creeping  bar- 
rages, actions,  interactions,  and  counter-actions 
were  timed  and  concerted  as  no  Staff  of  ours  had 
done  it  before.  The  intricate  dance  which  has 
to  go  on  behind  a  crowded  battle  front,  so  that 
columns  moving  east  and  west  and  columns  moving 
north  and  south  shall  not  coincide  at  cross  roads, 
was  danced  with  the  circumstantial  precision  of 
the  best  ballets.  An  officer  cast  away  somewhere 
in  charge  of  a  wayside  smithy  for  patching  up 
chipped  guns  felt  that  there  was  a  power  perched 
on  the  top  of  the  hill  at  Cassel  which  smelt  out  a 
bit  of  good  work,  or  of  bad,  wherever  anyone 
did  it.  Sense,  keenness,  sympathy,  resolution,  ex- 
actness— all  the  good  things  abode  in  that  eyrie 

170 


AUTUMN  COMES 

which  have  to  be  in  attendance  before  genius  can 
bring  off  its  marvels;  every  chamber  swept  and 
garnished,  and  yet — . 

Foch  tells  us  what  he  thinks  Napoleon  might 
have  said  to  the  Allied  commands  if  he  could 
have  risen  in  our  black  times  from  the  dead. 
"  What  cards  you  people  have !  "  he  would  have 
said,  "  and  how  little  you  do  with  them  !  Look !  " 
And  then,  Foch  thinks,  within  a  month  or  two  he 
"  would  have  rearranged  everything,  gone  about 
it  all  in  some  new  way,  thrown  out  the  enemy's 
plans  and  quite  crushed  him."  That  "  some  new 
way  "  was  not  fated  to  come.  The  spark  refused 
to  fall,  the  divine  accident  would  not  happen. 
How  could  it?  you  ask  with  some  reason.  Had 
not  trench  warfare  reached  an  impasse?  Yes; 
there  is  always  an  impasse  before  genius  shows  a 
way  through.  Music  on  keyboards  had  reached  an 
impasse  before  a  person  of  genius  thought  of  using 
his  thumb  as  well  as  his  fingers.  Well,  that  was 
an  obvious  dodge,  you  may  say,  but  in  Flanders 
what  way  through  could  there  have  been?  The 
dodge  found  by  genius  is  always  an  obvious  dodge, 
afterwards.  Till  it  is  found  it  can  as  little  be 
stated  by  us  common  people  as  can  the  words  of 
the  poems  that  Keats  might  have  written  if  he  had 
lived  longer.    You  would  have  to  become  a  Keats 

171 


DISENCHANTMENT 

to  do  that,  and  a  Napoleon  to  say  how  Napoleon 
would  have  got  through  to  Bruges  in  the  autumn 
that  seemed  so  autumnal  to  us.  All  that  the  army 
knew,  as  it  decreased  in  the  mud,  was  that  no  such 
uncovenanted  mercy  came  to  transmute  its  casual- 
ties into  the  swiftly  and  richly  fruitful  ones  of  a 
Napoleon,  the  incidental  expenses  of  some  miracu- 
lous draught  of  victory. 

Nothing  to  grouse  at  in  that.  The  winds  of  in- 
spiration have  to  blow  the  best  way  they  can. 
Prospero  himself  could  not  raise  them;  how  could 
the  likes  of  us  hope  to?  And  yet  there  had  been 
that  illogical  hope,  almost  reliance — part  of  the 
high  unreason  of  faith  that  could  move  mountains 
in  1 9 14  and  seems  to  be  scarcely  able  to  shift  an 
ant-hill  to-day. 


172 


CHAPTER     X 

AUTUMN    TINTS    IN 
CHIVALRY 


IN  either  of  two  opposite  tempers  you  may 
carry  on  war.  In  one  of  the  two  you  will 
want  to  rate  your  enemy,  all  round,  as  high 
as  you  can.  You  may  pursue  him  down  a  trench, 
or  he  you;  but  in  neither  case  do  you  care  to  have 
him  described  by  somebody  far,  far  away  as  a 
fat  little  short-sighted  scrub.  Better  let  him  pass 
for  a  paladin.  This  may  at  bottom  be  vanity, 
sentimentality,  all  sorts  of  contemptible  things. 
Let  him  who  knows  the  heart  of  man  be  dogmatic 
about  it.  Anyhow,  this  temper  comes,  as  they 
would  say  in  Ireland,  of  decent  people.  It  spoke 
in  Porsena  of  Clusium's  whimsical  prayer  that  Ho- 
ratius  might  swim  the  Tiber  safely;  it  animates 
Velasquez'  knightly  Surrender  of  Breda;  it 
prompted  Lord  Roberts's  first  words  to  Cronje 
when  Paardeberg  fell — "  Sir,  you  have  made  a 
very  gallant  defence  ";  it  is  avowed  in  a  popular 
descant  of  Newboldt's — 

To  honour,  while  you  strike  him  down, 
The  foe  who  comes  with  eager  eyes. 

The  other  temper  has  its  niche  in  letters,  too. 
173 


DISENCHANTMENT 

There  was  the  man  that  "  wore  his  dagger  in  his 
mouth."  And  there  was  Little  Flanigan,  the 
bailiff's  man  in  Goldsmith's  play.  During  one  of 
our  old  wars  with  France  he  was  always  "  damn- 
ing the  French,  the  parle-vous,  and  all  that  be- 
longed to  them."  "  What,"  he  would  ask  the 
company,  "makes  the  bread  rising?  The  parle- 
vous  that  devour  us.  What  makes  the  mutton 
fivepence  a  pound?  The  parle-vous  that  eat  it  up. 
What  makes  the  beer  threepence-halfpenny  a 
pot?" 

Well,  your  first  aim  in  war  is  to  hit  your  enemy 
hard,  and  the  question  may  well  be  quite  open — 
in  which  of  these  tempers  can  he  be  hit  hardest? 
If,  as  we  hear,  a  man's  strength  be  "  as  the 
strength  of  ten  because  his  heart  is  pure," 
possibly  it  may  add  a  few  footpounds  to  his 
momentum  in  an  attack  if  he  has  kept  a 
clean  tongue  in  his  head.  And  yet  the  pro- 
duction of  heavy  woollens  in  the  West  Riding,  for 
War  Office  use,  may,  for  all  that  we  know,  have 
been  accelerated  by  yarns  about  crucified  Cana- 
dians and  naked  bodies  of  women  found  in  Ger- 
man trenches.  There  is  always  so  much,  so  bewil- 
deringly  much,  to  be  said  on  both  sides.  All  I  can 
tell  is  that  during  the  war  the  Newbolt  spirit 
seemed,  on  the  whole,  to  have  its  chief  seat  in  and 

174 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

near  our  front  line,  and  thence  to  die  down  west- 
ward all  the  way  to  London.  There  Little  Flani- 
gan  was  enthroned,  and,  like  Montrose,  would 
bear  no  rival  near  his  throne,  so  that  a  man  on 
leave  from  our  trench  system  stood  in  some  dan- 
ger of  being  regarded  as  little  better  than  one  of 
the  wicked.  Anyhow,  he  was  a  kind  of  provincial. 
Not  his  will,  but  that  of  Flanigan,  had  to  be  done. 
For  Flanigan  was  at  the  centre  of  things;  he  had 
leisure,  or  else  volubility  was  his  trade;  and  he 
had  got  hold  of  the  megaphones. 

II 

In  the  first  months  of  the  war  there  was  any 
amount  of  good  sportsmanship  going;  most,  of 
course,  among  men  who  had  seen  already  the 
whites  of  enemy  eyes.  I  remember  the  potent 
emetic  effect  of  Flaniganism  upon  a  little  blond 
Regular  subaltern  maimed  at  the  first  battle  of 
Ypres.  "  Pretty  measly  sample  of  the  sin  against 
the  Holy  Ghost!  "  the  one-legged  child  grunted 
savagely,  showing  a  London  paper's  comic  sketch 
of  a  corpulent  German  running  away.  The  first 
words  I  ever  heard  uttered  in  palliation  of  Ger- 
man misdoings  in  Belgium  came  from  a  Regular 
N.C.O.,  a  Dragoon  Guards  sergeant,  holding 
forth  to  a  sergeants'  mess  behind  our  line.   "  We'd 

175 


DISENCHANTMENT 

have  done  every  damn  thing  they  did,"  he  averred, 
"if  it  had  been  we."  I  thought  him  rather  extrava- 
gant, then.  Later  on,  when  the  long  row  of  hut 
hospitals,  jammed  between  the  Calais-Paris  Rail- 
way at  Etaples  and  the  great  reinforcement  camp 
on  the  sand-hills  above  it,  was  badly  bombed  from 
the  air,  even  the  wrath  of  the  R.A.M.C.  against 
those  who  had  wedged  in  its  wounded  and  nurses 
between  two  staple  targets  scarcely  exceeded  that 
of  our  Royal  Air  Force  against  war  correspond- 
ents who  said  the  enemy  must  have  done  it  on 
purpose. 

Airmen,  no  doubt,  or  some  of  them,  went  to 
much  greater  lengths  in  the  chivalrous  line  than 
the  rest  of  us.  Many  things  helped  them  to  do  it. 
Combatant  flying  was  still  new  enough  to  be  al- 
most wholly  an  officer's  job;  the  knight  took  the 
knocks,  and  the  squire  stayed  behind  and  looked 
after  his  gear.  Air-fighting  came  to  be  pretty  well 
the  old  duel,  or  else  the  mediaeval  melee  between 
little  picked  teams.  The  clean  element,  too,  may 
have  counted — it  always  looked  a  clean  job  from 
below,  where  your  airy  notions  got  mixed  with 
trench  mud,  while  the  airman  seemed  like  Sylvia  in 
the  song,  who  so  excelled  "  each  mortal  thing 
upon  the  dull  earth  dwelling."  Whatever  the 
cause,  he  excelled  in  his  bearing  towards  enemies, 

176 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

dead  or  alive.  The  funeral  that  he  gave  to  Rich- 
thofen  in  France  was  one  of  the  few  handsome 
gestures  exchanged  in  the  war.  And  whenever 
Little  Flanigan  at  home  began  squealing  aloud 
that  we  ought  to  take  some  of  our  airmen  off  fight- 
ing and  make  them  bomb  German  women  and  chil- 
dren instead,  our  airmen's  scorn  for  these  ethics 
of  the  dirt  helped  to  keep  up  the  flickering  hope 
that  the  post-war  world  might  not  be  ignoble. 

Even  on  the  dull  earth  it  takes  time  and  pains  to 
get  a  clean-run  boy  or  young  man  into  a  mean 
frame  of  mind.  A  fine  N.C.O.  of  the  Grenadier 
Guards  was  killed  near  Laventie — no  one  knows 
how — while  going  over  to  shake  hands  with  the 
Germans  on  Christmas  morning.  "What!  not 
shake  on  Christmas  Day?"  He  would  have 
thought  it  poor,  sulky  fighting.  Near  Armen- 
tieres  at  the  Christmas  of  19 14  an  incident  hap- 
pened which  seemed  quite  the  natural  thing  to 
most  soldiers  then.  On  Christmas  Eve  the  Ger- 
mans lit  up  their  front  line  with  Chinese  lant^ns. 
Two  British  oflEicers  thereupon  walked  some  way 
across  No  Man's  Land,  hailed  the  enemy's  sen- 
tries, and  asked  for  an  officer.  The  German  sen- 
tries said,  "  Go  back,  or  we  shall  have  to  shoot." 
The  Englishmen  said  "  Not  likely!  "  advanced  to 
the  German  wire,  and  asked  again  for  an  officer. 

177 


DISENCHANTMENT 

The  sentries  held  their  fire  and  sent  for  an  officer. 
With  him  the  Englishmen  made  a  one-day  truce, 
and  on  Christmas  Day  the  two  sides  exchanged 
cigarettes  and  played  football  together.  The 
English  intended  the  truce  to  end  with  the  day,  as 
agreed,  but  decided  not  to  shoot  next  day  till  the 
enemy  did.  Next  morning  the  Germans  were  still 
to  be  seen  washing  and  breakfasting  outside  their 
wire;  so  our  men,  too,  got  out  of  the  trench  and 
sat  about  in  the  open.  One  of  them,  cleaning  his 
rifle,  loosed  a  shot  by  accident,  and  an  English 
subaltern  went  to  tell  the  Germans  it  had  not  been 
fired  to  kill.  The  ones  he  spoke  to  understood, 
but  as  he  was  walking  back  a  German  somewhere 
wide  on  a  flank  fired  and  hit  him  in  the  knee,  and 
he  has  walked  lame  ever  since.  Our  men  took  it 
that  some  German  sentry  had  misunderstood  our 
fluke  shot.  They  did  not  impute  dishonour.  The 
air  in  such  places  was  strangely  clean  in  those  dis- 
tant days.  During  one  of  the  very  few  months 
of  open  warfare  a  cavalry  private  of  ours  brought 
in  a  captive,  a  gorgeous  specimen  of  the  terrific 
Prussian  Uhlan  of  tradition.  "  But  why  didn't 
you  put  your  sword  through  him?"  an  oflicer 
asked,  who  belonged  to  the  school  of  Froissart  less 
obviously  than  the  private.  "  Well,  sir,"  the  cap- 
tor replied,  "  the  gentleman  wasn't  looking." 

178 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 
III 

At  no  seat  of  war  will  you  find  it  quite  easy  to 
live  up  to  Flanigan's  standards  of  hatred  towards 
an  enemy.  Reaching  a  front,  you  find  that  all  you 
want  is  just  to  win  the  war.  Soon  you  are  so  taken 
up  with  the  pursuit  of  this  aim  that  you  are  always 
forgetting  to  burn  with  the  gem-like  flame  of  pure 
fury  that  fires  the  lion-hearted  publicist  at  home. 

A  soldier  might  have  had  the  Athanasian  ec- 
stasy all  right  till  he  reached  the  firing  line.  Every 
individual  German  had  sunk  the  Lusitania;  there 
was  none  righteous,  none.  And  yet  at  a  front  the 
holy  passion  began  to  ooze  out  at  the  ends  of  his 
fingers.  The  bottom  trouble  is  that  you  cannot 
fight  a  man  in  the  physical  way  without  somehow 
touching  him.  The  relation  of  actual  combatants 
is  a  personal  one — no  doubt,  a  rude,  primitive 
one,  but  still  quite  advanced  as  compared  with  that 
between  a  learned  man  at  Berlin  who  keeps  on 
saying  Delenda  est  Britannia!  at  the  top  of  his 
voice  and  a  learned  man  in  London  who  keeps  on 
saying  that  every  German  must  have  a  black  heart 
because  Cassar  did  not  conquer  Germany  as  he  did 
Gaul  and  Britain.  Just  let  the  round  head  of  a 
German  appear  for  a  passing  second,  at  long  inter- 
vals, above  a  hummock  of  clay  in  the  middle  dis- 

179 


DISENCHANTMENT 

tance.  Before  you  had  made  half  a  dozen  sincere 
efforts  to  shoot  him  the  fatal  germ  of  human  rela- 
tionship had  begun  to  find  a  nidus  again:  he  had 
acquired  in  your  mind  the  rudiments  of  a  personal 
individuality.  You  would  go  on  trying  to  shoot 
him  with  zest — indeed,  with  a  diminished  likeli- 
hood of  missing,  for  mere  hatred  is  a  flustering 
emotion.  And  yet  the  hatred  business  had  started 
crumbling.  There  had  begun  the  insidious  change 
that  was  to  send  you  home,  on  your  first  leave, 
talking  unguardedly  of  "  old  Fritz  "  or  of  "  the 
good  old  Boche  "  to  the  pain  of  your  friends,  as  if 
he  were  a  stout  dog  fox  or  a  real  stag  of  a  hare. 
The  deadliest  solvent  of  your  exalted  hatreds  is 
laughter.  And  you  can  never  wholly  suppress 
laughter  between  two  crowds  of  millions  of  men 
standing  within  earshot  of  each  other  along  a  line 
of  hundreds  of  miles.  There  was,  in  the  Loos 
salient  in  1916,  a  German  who,  after  his  meals, 
would  halloo  across  to  an  English  unit  taunts 
about  certain  accidents  of  its  birth.  None  of  his 
British  hearers  could  help  laughing  at  his  mis- 
takes, his  knowledge,  and  his  English.  Nor  could 
the  least  humorous  priest  of  ill-will  have  kept  his 
countenance  at  a  relief  when  the  enemy  shouted: 
"  We  know  you  are  relieving,"  "  No  good  hiding 
it,"  "  Good-bye,  Ox  and  Bucks,"  "  Who's  coming 

180 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

in?"  and  some  humorist  in  the  obscure  English 
battalion  relieving  shouted  back,  with  a  terrific 
assumption  of  accent,  "  Furrst  Black  Watch!  "  or 
"Th'  Oirish  Gyards !  "  and  a  hush  fell  at  the 
sound  of  these  great  names.  Comedy,  expelled 
with  a  fork  by  the  dignified  figure  of  Quenchless 
Hate,  had  begun  to  steal  back  of  herself. 

At  home  that  tragedy  queen  might  do  very  well; 
she  did  not  have  these  tenpenny  nails  scattered 
about  on  her  road  to  puncture  the  nobly  inflated 
tyres  of  her  chariot.  The  heroes  who  spoke  up 
for  shooing  all  the  old  German  governesses  into 
the  barbed  wire  compounds  were  not  exposed  to 
the  moral  danger  of  actually  hustling,  propria 
persona,  these  formidable  ancients.  But  while 
Hamilcar  at  home  was  swearing  Hannibal  and  all 
the  other  little  Hamilcars  to  undying  hatred  of  the 
foe,  an  enemy  dog  might  be  trotting  across  to  the 
British  front  line  to  sample  its  rats,  and  its  owner 
be  losing  in  some  British  company's  eyes  his  prop- 
er quality  as  an  incarnation  of  all  the  Satanism 
of  Potsdam  and  becoming  simply  "  him  that  lost 
the  dog." 

If  you  took  his  trench  it  might  be  no  better ;  per- 
haps Incarnate  Evil  had  left  its  bit  of  food  half- 
cooked,  and  the  muddy  straw,  where  it  lay  last, 
was  pressed  into  a  hollow  by  Incarnate  Evil's  back 

i8i 


DISENCHANTMENT 

as  by  a  cat's.  Incarnate  Evil  should  not  do  these 
things  that  other  people  in  trenches  do.  It  ought 
to  be  more  strange  and  beastly  and  keep  on  mak- 
ing beaux  gestes  with  its  talons  and  tail,  like  the 
proper  dragon  slain  by  St.  George.  Perhaps  In- 
carnate Evil  was  extinct  and  you  went  over  its 
pockets.  They  never  contained  the  right  things — 
no  poison  to  put  in  our  wells,  no  practical  hints 
for  crucifying  Canadians;  only  the  usual  stuffing 
of  all  soldiers'  pockets — photographs  and  tobacco 
and  bits  of  string  and  the  wife's  letters,  all  about 
how  tramps  were  always  stealing  potatoes  out  of 
the  garden,  and  how  the  baby  was  worse,  and  was 
his  leave  never  coming!  No  good  to  look  at  such 
things. 

IV 

With  this  guilty  weakness  gaining  upon  them 
our  troops  drove  the  Germans  from  Albert  to 
Mons.  There  were  scandalous  scenes  on  the  way. 
Imagine  two  hundred  German  prisoners  grinning 
inside  a  wire  cage  while  a  little  Cockney  corporal 
chaffs  them  in  half  the  dialects  of  Germany!  His 
father,  he  says,  was  a  slop  tailor  in  Whitechapel; 
most  of  his  journeymen  came  from  somewhere  or 
other  in  Germany — "Ah!  and  my  dad  sweated 
'em  proper,"  he  says  proudly;  so  the  boy  learnt 

182 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

all  their  kinds  of  talk.  He  convulses  Bavarians 
now  with  his  flow  of  Silesian.  He  fraternizes 
grossly  and  jubilantly.  Other  British  soldiers 
laugh  when  one  of  the  Germans  sings,  in  return 
for  favours  received,  the  British  ballad  "  Knocked 
'em  in  the  01'  Kent  Road."  By  the  time  our  men 
had  marched  to  the  Rhine  there  was  little  hatred 
left  in  them.  How  can  you  hate  the  small  boy  who 
stands  at  the  farm  door  visibly  torn  between  dread 
of  the  invader  and  deep  delight  in  all  soldiers,  as 
soldiers?  How  shall  a  man  not  offer  a  drink  to 
the  first  disbanded  German  soldier  who  sits  next 
to  him  in  a  public  house  at  Cologne,  and  try  to 
find  out  if  he  was  ever  in  the  line  at  the  Brick- 
stacks  or  near  the  Big  Crater?  Why,  that  might 
have  been  his  dog! 

The  billeted  soldier's  immemorial  claim  on  "  a 
place  by  the  fire  "  carried  on  the  fell  work.  It  is 
hopelessly  bad  for  your  grand  Byronic  hates  if  you 
sit  through  whole  winter  evenings  in  the  abhorred 
foe's  kitchen  and  the  abhorred  foe  grants  you  the 
uncovenanted  mercy  of  hot  coffee  and  discusses 
without  rancour  the  relative  daily  yields  of  the' 
British  and  the  German  milch  cow.  And  then 
comes  into  play  the  British  soldier's  incorrigible 
propensity,  wherever  he  be,  to  form  virtuous  at- 
tachments.     "  Love,    unfoiled    in    the    war,"    as 

183 


DISENCHANTMENT 

Sophocles  says.  The  broad  road  has  a  terribly 
easy  gradient.  When  all  the  great  and  wise  at 
Paris  were  making  peace,  as  somebody  said,  with 
a  vengeance,  our  command  on  the  Rhine  had  to 
send  a  wire  to  say  that  unless  something  was  done 
to  feed  the  Germans  starving  in  the  slums  it  could 
not  answer  for  discipline  in  its  army;  the  men  were 
giving  their  rations  away,  and  no  orders  would 
stop  them.  Rank  "  Pro-Germanism,"  you  see — 
the  heresy  of  Edith  Cavell;  "Patriotism  is  not 
enough;  I  must  have  no  hatred  or  bitterness  in  my 
heart."  While  these  men  fought  on,  year  after 
year,  they  had  mostly  been  growing  more  void  of 
mere  spite  all  the  time,  feeling  always  more  and 
more  sure  that  the  average  German  was  just  a  de- 
cent poor  devil  like  everyone  else.  One  trembles 
to  think  what  the  really  first-class  haters  at  home 
would  have  said  of  our  army  if  they  had  known  at 
the  time. 


Even  at  places  less  distant  than  home  the  sur- 
vival of  old  English  standards  of  fighting  had 
given  some  scandal.  In  that  autumn  of  the  war 
when  our  generalship  seemed  to  have  explored  all 
its  own  talents  and  found  only  the  means  to  stage 
in  an  orderly  way  the  greatest  possible  number 

184 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

of  combats  of  pure  attrition,  the  crying  up  of  un- 
knightliness  became  a  kind  of  fashion  among  a 
good  many  Staff  Officers  of  the  higher  grades.  "  I 
fancy  our  fellows  were  not  taking  many  prisoners 
this  morning,"  a  Corps  Commander  would  say 
with  a  complacent  grin,  on  the  evening  after  a  bat- 
tle. Jocose  stories  of  comic  things  said  by  privates 
when  getting  rid  of  undesired  captives  became  cur- 
rent in  messes  far  in  the  rear.  The  other  day  I 
saw  in  a  history  of  one  of  the  most  gallant  of  all 
British  divisions  an  illustration  given  by  the  officer 
who  wrote  it  of  what  he  believed  to  be  the  true 
martial  spirit.  It  was  the  case  of  a  wounded 
Highlander  who  had  received  with  a  bomb  a  Ger- 
man Red  Cross  orderly  who  was  coming  to  help 
him.  A  General  of  some  consequence  during  part 
of  the  war  gave  a  lecture,  towards  its  end,  to  a 
body  of  officers  and  others  on  what  he  called  "  the 
fighting  spirit."  He  told  with  enthusiasm  an  anec- 
dote of  a  captured  trench  in  which  some  of  our 
men  had  been  killing  off  German  appellants  for 
quarter.  Another  German  appearing  and  putting 
his  hands  up,  one  of  our  men — so  the  story  went 
—called  out,  '"Ere!  Where's  'Arry?  'E  ain't 
'ad  one  yet."  Probably  some  one  had  pulled  the 
good  general's  leg,  and  the  thing  never  happened. 
But   he    believed    it,    and   deeply    approved   the 

i8s 


DISENCHANTMENT 

"  blooding  "  of  'Arry.  That,  he  explained,  was 
the  "  fighting  spirit."  Men  more  versed  than  he 
In  the  actual  hand-to-hand  business  of  fighting  this 
war  knew  that  he  was  mistaken,  and  that  the  spirit 
of  trial  by  combat  and  that  of  pork-butchery  are 
distinct.  But  that  is  of  course.  The  notable  thing 
was  that  such  things  should  be  said  by  anyone 
wearing  our  uniform.  Twenty  years  before,  if  it 
had  been  rumoured,  you  would,  without  waiting, 
have  called  the  rumour  a  lie  invented  by  some 
detractor  of  England  or  of  her  army.  Now  it 
passed  quite  unhlssed.  It  was  the  latter-day  wis- 
dom. Scrofulous  minds  at  home  had  long  been 
Itching,  publicly  and  in  print,  to  bomb  German 
women  and  children  from  aeroplanes,  and  to 
"  take  it  out  of  "  German  prisoners  of  war.  Now 
the  disease  had  even  affected  some  parts  of  the 
non-combatant  Staff  of  our  army. 

VI 

You  know  the  most  often  quoted  of  all  passages 
of  Burke.  Indeed,  it  Is  only  through  quotations 
of  it  that  most  of  us  know  Burke  at  all — 

But  the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone  .  .  .  the  unbought 
grace  of  life,  the  cheap  defence  of  nations,  the  nurse  of 
manly  sentiment  and  heroic  enterprise  is  gone !    It  is  gone, 

i86 


AUTUMN    TINTS    IN    CHIVALRY 

that  sensibility  of  principle,  that  chastity  of  honour, 
which  felt  a  stain  like  a  wound,  which  inspired  courage 
whilst  it  mitigated  ferocity,  which  ennobled  whatever  it 
touched,  and  under  which  vice  itself  lost  half  its  evil  by 
losing  all  its  grossness. 

Burke  would  never  say  a  thing  by  halves.  And 
as  truth  goes  by  halves,  and  declines  to  be  sweep- 
ing like  rhetoric,  Burke  made  sure  of  being  wrong 
to  the  tune  of  some  fifty  per  cent.  The  French 
Revolution  did  not,  as  his  beautiful  language  im- 
plies, confine  mankind  for  the  rest  of  its  days  to 
the  procreation  of  curs.  And  yet  his  words  do 
give  you,  in  their  own  lush,  Corinthian  way,  a  no- 
tion of  something  that  probably  did  happen,  a 
certain  limited  shifting  of  the  centre  of  gravity 
of  West  European  morals  or  manners. 

One  would  be  talking  like  Burke — talking,  per- 
haps you  might  say,  through  Burke's  hat — if  one 
were  to  say  that  the  war  found  chivalry  alive  and 
left  it  dead.  Chivalry  is  about  as  likely  to  perish 
as  brown  eyes  or  the  moon.  Yet  something  did 
happen,  during  the  war,  to  which  these  wild  words 
would  have  some  sort  of  relation.  We  were  not 
all  Bayards  in  19 14;  even  then  a  great  part  of  our 
Press  could  not  tell  indignation  from  spite,  nor  up- 
hold the  best  cause  in  the  world  without  turpi- 
tude.   Nor  were  we  all,  after  the  Armistice,  rods 

187 


DISENCHANTMENT 

of  the  houses  of  Thersites  and  Cleon;  Halg  was 
still  alive,  and  so  were  Gough  and  Hamilton  and 
thousands  of  Arthurian  subalterns  and  privates 
and  of  hke-minded  civilians,  though  it  is  harder 
for  a  civilian  not  to  lose  generosity  during  a  war. 
But  something  had  happened;  the  chivalrous  tem- 
per had  had  a  set-back ;  it  was  no  longer  the  mode ; 
the  latest  wear  was  a  fine  robust  shabbiness.  All 
through  the  war  there  had  been  a  bear  movement 
in  Newbolts  and  Burkes,  and,  corresponding  to 
this,  a  bull  movement  in  stocks  of  the  Little  Flani- 
gan  group. 


i88 


CHAPTERXI 

STARS     IN    THEIR    COURSES 


DOTH  any  man  doubt,"  the  wise  Bacon 
asks,  "  that  if  there  were  taken  out  of 
men's  minds  vain  opinions,  flattering 
hopes,  false  valuations,  imaginations  as  one  would, 
and  the  like,  but  it  would  leave  the  minds  of  a 
number  of  men  poor  shrunken  things,  full  of  mel- 
ancholy and  indisposition  and  unpleasing  to  them- 
selves? "  One  of  the  most  sweetly  flattering  hopes 
that  we  had  in  the  August  of  19 14  was  that  in 
view  of  the  greatness  of  the  occasion  causes  were 
not  going  to  have  their  effects. 

Nothing  new,  you  may  truthfully  answer,  in 
that.  The  improvement  is  one  which  man,  in  his 
cups  and  his  dreams  and  other  seasons  of  maudlin 
vision,  has  always  perceived  to  have  just  come  at 
last.  Now,  he  exaltedly  says  to  himself,  for  a 
clean  break  with  my  inadequately  wise  and  bril- 
liant past.  Away  with  that  plaguey  old  list  of  my 
things  done  which  should  not  have  been  done, 
and  of  things  left  undone  which  I  ought  to  have 
done.  At  the  end  of  popular  plays  the  sympa- 
thetic youth  who  had  idled,  philandered,  or  stolen 
till  then  would  book  to  the  Rand  or  the  Yukon, 
fully  assured  that  "  in  that  free,  outdoor  life  " 

189 


DISENCHANTMENT 

one's  character  is  not  one's  fate  any  longer; 
blessed,  "  out  there,"  are  Europe's  slackers  and 
wasters,  for  they  shall  inherit  the  earth,  or  its  au- 
riferous parts.  Grasshoppers,  too,  if  they  drank 
or  resorted  to  sentimental  novels  and  plays,  might 
have  gallant  little  revolts  in  their  hearts,  and 
chirrup  "Down  with  causation!"  and  feel  cock- 
sure that  some  good-natured  god  would  give  them 
a  chance  of  "  redeeming  their  pasts  "  quite  late  in 
autumn,  and  put  in  their  way  a  winter  provision 
far  ampler  than  that  which  crowns  the  coolie  la- 
bours of  those  sorry  daughters  of  Martha,  the 
bees.  But,  for  working  this  benign  miracle  in  the 
soul,  no  other  strong  waters  can  equal  the  early 
days  of  a  war.  If,  with  unbecoming  sobriety,  any- 
one hints,  in  such  days,  that  causes  may  still  retain 
some  sort  of  control,  he  is  easily  seen  to  have  no 
drop  of  true  blood  in  him;  base  is  the  slave  who 
fears  we  must  reap  as  we  sowed;  shame  upon  spir- 
itless whispers  about  any  connection  between  the 
making  of  beds  and  the  lying  thereon;  now  they 
shall  see  what  excellent  hothouse  grapes  will  be 
borne  by  the  fine  healthy  thistles  that  we  have  been 
planting  and  watering. 

Something  in  it  too,  perhaps — at  least  some  cen- 
turies ago.  When  a  great  nation's  army  was  only 
a  few  thousands  strong  the  freak  and  the  fluke  had 

190 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

their  chance.  An  Achilles  or  two,  at  the  top  of 
their  form  on  the  day,  might  upset  the  odds.  But 
when  armies  are  millions  of  men,  and  machinery 
counts  for  more  than  the  men,  the  few  divine  acci- 
dents of  exceptional  valour  cannot  go  far.  With 
eleven  a-side  a  Grace  or  an  Armstrong  may  win 
a  game  off  his  own  bat.  He  will  hardly  do  that 
in  a  game  where  the  sides  are  eleven  thousand 
apiece.  More  and  more,  as  the  armies  increase, 
must  the  law  of  averages  have  it  its  own  dreary 
way;  glorious  uncertainties  wither;  statistical 
"  curves  "  of  relative  national  fitness  to  win,  and 
to  stand  the  strain  of  winning  or  losing,  overbear 
everything  else.  What  are  the  two  armies'  and  the 
two  nations'  relative  numbers?  What  is  the  mean 
physique  on  each  side?  And  the  mean  intelli- 
gence? How  far  has  each  nation's  history — so- 
cial, political,  religious,  industrial — tended  to 
make  its  men  rich  in  just  pride,  self-reliance,  high 
spirit,  devotion,  and  hardihood?  How  many  per 
cent  on  each  side  have  been  sapped  by  venereal  dis- 
ease? How  much  of  their  work  have  its  officers 
troubled  to  learn?  These  are  the  questions.  The 
more  men  you  have  in  a  war,  and  the  longer  it 
lasts,  the  more  completely  has  it  to  lose  the  ro- 
mance of  a  glorious  gamble  and  sink — or,  as  some 
would  say,  rise — to  the  plane  of  a  circumstantial, 

191 


DISENCHANTMENT 

matter-of-fact  liquidation  of  whatever  relative 
messes  the  nations  engaged  have  made  of  the 
whole  of  their  previous  lives. 

II 

Any  soldier  will  tell  you  the  bayonet  does  not 
win  battles.  It  only  claims,  in  a  way  that  a  beaten 
side  cannot  ignore,  a  victory  won  already  by  gun- 
fire, rifles,  gas,  bombs,  or  some  combination  of 
these.  The  bayonet's  thrust  is  more  of  a  gesture : 
a  cogent  appeal,  like  the  urgent  "  How's  that?  " 
from  the  whole  of  the  field  when  a  batsman  is  al- 
most certainly  out.  But  you  may  go  much  further 
back.  That  predominant  fire  itself  is  just  such  an- 
other appeal.  Its  greater  volume  and  better  di- 
rection are  only  the  terms  of  an  army's  or  a  na- 
tion's claim  to  be  registered  as  the  winner  of  what 
it  had  really  won  long  ago  when,  compared  with 
the  other  nation,  it  minded  its  job  and  lived  cleanly 
and  sanely.  All  war  on  the  new  huge  scale  may 
be  seen  as  a  process,  very  expensive,  of  registra- 
tion or  verification.  Whenever  a  war  is  declared 
you  may  say  that  now,  in  a  sense,  it  is  over  at  last; 
all  the  votes  have  been  cast;  the  examination  pa- 
pers are  written;  the  time  has  come  for  the  count- 
ing of  votes  and  adjudging  of  marks.  Of  course, 
we  may  still  "  do  our  bit,"  but  the  possible  size  of 

192 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

our  bit  had  its  limit  fixed  long  ago  by  the  acts  of 
ourselves  and  our  fathers  and  rulers  which  made 
us  the  men  that  we  are  and  no  more.  No  use  now 
to  try  to  cadge  favour  with  any  ad  hoc  God  of 
Battles.  For  this,  of  all  gods,  is  the  most  dourly 
Protestant.  No  squaring  of  him  on  the  deathbeds 
of  people  who  would  not  work  while  it  was  yet 
light. 

From  many  points  in  the  field — some  of  the 
best  were  in  the  tops  of  high  trees  on  high  ground 
— you  could  watch  through  your  glass  the  casting 
up  of  accounts.  You  might  survey  from  begin- 
ning to  end  a  British  attack  up  a  bare  opposite 
slope,  perhaps  with  home  troops  on  the  left  and 
Canadian  or  Australasian  troops  on  the  right. 
You  had  already  seen  them  meet  on  roads  in  the 
rear:  battalions  of  colourless,  stunted,  half-tooth- 
less lads  from  hot,  humid  Lancashire  mills;  bat- 
talions of  slow,  staring  faces,  gargoyles  out  of  the 
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral  edifice  of  mod- 
ern English  rural  life;  Dominion  battalions  of  men 
startllngly  taller,  stronger,  handsomer,  prouder, 
firmer  in  nerve,  better  schooled,  more  boldly  in- 
terested in  life,  quicker  to  take  means  to  an  end 
and  to  parry  and  counter  any  new  blow  of  circum- 
stance, men  who  had  learned  already  to  look  at 
our  men  with  the  half-curious,  half-pitying  look  of 

193 


DISENCHANTMENT 

a  higher,  happier  caste  at  a  lower.  And  now  you 
saw  them,  all  these  kinds,  arise  in  one  continuous 
line  out  of  the  earth  and  walk  forward  to  bear 
in  the  riddled  flesh  and  wrung  spirit  the  sins  of 
their  several  fathers,  pastors,  and  masters. 

Time  after  time  there  would  come  to  the  watch- 
ing eye,  to  the  mind  still  desperately  hugging  the 
hope  that  known  causes  might  not  bring  their  nor- 
mal effects,  the  same  crushing  demonstration  that 
things  are  as  we  have  made  them.  Sometimes  the 
line  of  home  troops  would  break  into  gaps  and 
bunches,  lose  touch  and  direction  and  common  pur- 
pose, some  of  the  knots  plunging  on  into  the  back 
of  our  barrage  or  feasting  some  enemy  machine- 
gunner  on  their  density,  others  straggling  back  to 
the  place  whence  they  had  started,  while  the  Do- 
minion troops  still  ambled  steadily  on,  their  line 
delicately  waving  but  always  continuous,  closing 
again,  as  living  flesh  closes  over  a  pinprick,  wher- 
ever an  enemy  shell  tore  a  hole. 

Perhaps  the  undersized  boys  from  our  slums 
and  the  under-witted  boys  from  the  "  agricultural, 
residential,  and  sporting  estates  "  of  our  auction- 
eers' advertisements  would  get  to  their  goal,  the 
spirit  wrestling  prodigies  of  valour  out  of  the 
wronged  flesh,  hold  on  there  for  an  hour  or  two 
with  the  shells  splashing  the  earth  up  about  them 

194 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

like  puddle  water  when  great  rain-drops  make  its 
surface  jump,  and  then  fall  back  under  orders, 
without  any  need,  the  brain  of  our  army  failing  to 
know  how  to  use  what  its  muscle  had  won.  Then, 
while  you  saw  the  triumphant  Australians  throw 
back  a  protective  flank  from  the  left  of  their  new- 
ly-won front  to  the  English  right,  far  in  their 
rear,  you  knew  bitterly  what  the  Australians  were 
saying  once  more  :  "  They've  let  us  down  again !  " 
"  Another  Tommy  ofl^cer  who  didn't  know  he'd 
won!  "  As  if  it  were  the  fault,  that  day,  of  any- 
one there !  Our  men  could  only  draw  on  such 
funds  of  nerve  and  physique,  knowledge  and  skill, 
as  we  had  put  into  the  bank  for  them.  Not  they, 
but  their  rulers  and  "  betters,"  had  lost  their  heads 
in  the  joy  of  making  money  fast  out  of  steam,  and 
so  made  half  of  our  nation  slum-dwellers.  It  was 
not  they  who  had  moulded  English  rustic  life  to 
keep  up  the  complacency  of  sentimental  modern 
imitators  of  feudal  barons.  It  was  not  they  who 
had  made  our  Regular  Army  neither  aristocratic, 
with  the  virtues  of  aristocracy,  nor  democratic, 
with  the  different  virtues  of  democracy,  nor  keenly 
professional  with  the  professional  virtues  of  gusto 
and  curiosity  about  the  possibilities  of  its  work. 
Delicta  majorum  immeritus  lues.  Like  the  syph- 
ilitic children  of  some  jolly  Victorian  rake,  they 

195 


DISENCHANTMENT 

could  only  bring  to  this  harsh  examination  such 
health  and  sanity  as  all  the  pleasant  vices  of  Vic- 
torian and  Edwardian  England  had  left  them. 

Ill 

The  winter  after  the  battle  of  Loos  a  sentry 
on  guard  at  one  part  of  our  line  could  always  see 
the  frustrate  skeletons  of  many  English  dead. 
They  lay  outside  our  wire,  picked  clean  by  the  rats, 
so  that  the  khaki  fell  in  on  them  loosely — little 
heaps  of  bone  and  cloth  half  hidden  now  by  net- 
tles and  grass.  If  the  sentry  had  been  a  year  in 
the  army  he  knew  well  enough  that  they  had  gone 
foredoomed  into  a  battle  lost  before  a  shot  was 
fired.  After  the  Boer  War,  you  remember,  Eng- 
land, under  the  first  shock  of  its  blunders,  had 
tried  to  find  out  why  the  Staff  work  was  so  bad. 
What  it  found,  in  the  words  of  a  famous  Report, 
was  that  the  fashion  in  sentiment  in  our  Regular 
Army  was  to  think  hard  work  "bad  form";  a 
subaltern  was  felt  to  be  a  bit  of  a  scrub  if  he  wor- 
ried too  much  about  discovering  how  to  support  an 
attack  when  he  might  be  more  spiritedly  employed 
in  playing  polo;  "The  nobleness  of  life,"  as  An- 
tony said,  when  he  kissed  Cleopatra,  was  to  go 
racing  or  hunting,  not  to  sit  learning  how  to  fore- 
cast the  course  of  great  battles  and  how  to  pro- 

196 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

vide  for  answering  their  calls.  And  so  the  swathes 
of  little  brown  bundles,  with  bones  showing 
through,  lay  in  the  nettles  and  grass. 

Consider  the  course  of  the  life  of  the  British 
Regular  officer  as  you  had  known  him  in  youth — 
not  the  pick,  the  saving  few,  the  unconquerably 
sound  and  keen,  but  the  average,  staple  article 
made  by  a  sleek,  complacent,  snobbish,  safe, 
wealth-governed  England  after  her  own  image. 
Think  of  his  school;  of  the  mystic  aureole  of  qua- 
si-moral beauty  attached  by  authority  there  to  ab- 
sorption in  the  easy  thing — in  play;  the  almost 
passionate  adoration  of  all  those  energies  and 
dexterities  which,  in  this  world  of  evolution  to- 
wards the  primacy  of  the  acute,  full  brain,  are  of 
the  least  possible  use  as  aids  to  survival  in  men 
and  to  victory  in  armies.  Before  he  first  left  home 
for  school  he  may  have  been  a  normal  child  who 
only  craved  to  be  given  some  bit,  any  odd  bit,  of 
"  real  work,"  as  an  experience  more  thrilling  than 
games.  Like  most  children,  he  may  have  had  a 
zestful  command  of  fresh,  vivid,  personal  speech, 
his  choice  of  words  expressing  simply  and  gaily  the 
individual  working  of  his  mind  and  his  joy  in  its 
work.  Through  easy  contact  with  gardeners, 
gamekeepers,  and  village  boys  he  often  had  estab- 
lished  a   quite   natural,    unconscious    friendliness 

197 


DISENCHANTMENT 

with  people  of  different  social  grades.  He  was 
probably  born  of  the  kind  that  pries  young,  that 
ask,  when  they  play  on  sea  sands,  why  there  are 
tides,  and  what  goes  on  in  the  sky  that  there 
should  be  rain.  And  then  down  came  the  shades 
of  the  prison-house.  To  make  this  large,  gay  book 
of  fairy  tales,  the  earth,  dull  and  stale  to  a  child 
importunately  fingering  at  its  covers  might  seem 
a  task  to  daunt  the  strongest.  But  many  of  the 
teachers  of  our  youth  are  indomitable  men.  They 
can  make  earth's  most  ardent  small  lover  learn 
from  a  book  what  a  bore  his  dear  earth  can  be, 
with  her  strings  of  names  of  towns,  rivers,  and 
lakes,  her  mileages  a  faire  mourir,  and  her  insuf- 
ferable tale  of  flax  and  jute.  With  an  equal  firm- 
ness your  early  power  of  supple  and  bright-col- 
oured speech  may  be  taken  away  and  a  rag-bag  of 
feeble  stock  phrases,  misfits  for  all  your  thoughts, 
and  worn  dull  and  dirty  by  everyone  else,  be  forced 
upon  you  instead  of  the  treasure  you  had.  You 
may  leave  school  unable  to  tell  what  stars  are 
about  you  at  night  or  to  ask  your  way  to  a  jour- 
ney's end  in  any  country  but  your  own.  Between 
your  helpless  mind  and  most  of  your  fellow-coun- 
trymen thick  screens  of  division  are  drawn,  so  that 
when  you  are  fifteen  you  do  not  know  how  to 
speak  to  them  with  a  natural  courtesy;  you  have 

198 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

a  vague  Idea  that  they  will  steal  your  watch  if  you 
leave  it  about.  Above  all,  you  have  learnt  that 
it  is  still  "bad  form"  to  work;  that  the  youth 
with  brains  and  no  money  may  well  be  despised  by 
the  youth  with  money  and  no  brains;  that  the  ab- 
sorbed student  or  artist  is  ignoble  or  grotesque; 
that  to  be  able  to  afford  yourself  "  a  good  time  " 
is  a  natural  title  to  respect  and  regard;  and  that 
to  give  yourself  any  "  good  time  "  that  you  can  is 
an  action  of  spirit.  So  it  went  on  at  prep,  school, 
public  school,  Sandhurst,  Camberley.  That  was 
how  Staff  College  French  came  to  be  what  it 
was.  And  as  it  was  what  it  was,  you  can  guess 
what  Staff  College  tactics  and  strategy  were,  and 
why  all  the  little  brown  bundles  lay  where  they  did 
in  the  nettles  and  grass. 

IV 

You  are  more  aware  of  the  stars  in  war  than  In 
peace.  A  full  moon  may  quite  halve  the  cares  of 
a  sentry;  the  Pole  Star  will  sometimes  be  all  that  a 
company  has,  when  relieved,  to  guide  it  back 
across  country  to  Paradisiac  rest;  sleeping  often 
under  the  sky,  you  come  to  find  out  for  yourself 
what  nobody  taught  you  at  school — how  Orion  is 
sure  to  be  not  there  in  summer,  and  Aquila  always 
missing  in  March,  and  how  the  Great  Bear,  that 

199 


DISENCHANTMENT 

was  straight  overhead  in  the  April  nights,  is  wont 
to  hang  low  in  the  north  in  the  autumn.  Childish 
as  it  may  seem  to  the  wise,  a  few  years'  nightly 
view  of  these  and  other  invariable  arrangements 
may  give  a  simple  soul  a  surprisingly  lively  twinge 
of  what  the  ages  of  faith  seem  to  have  meant  by 
the  fear  of  God — the  awesome  suspicion  that 
there  is  some  sort  of  fundamental  world  order  or 
control  which  cannot  by  any  means  be  put  off  or 
dodged  or  bribed  to  help  you  to  break  its  own 
laws.  "  Anything,"  the  old  Regular  warrant-offi- 
cers say,  "  can  be  wangled  in  the  army,"  but  who 
shall  push  the  Dragon  or  the  Great  Dog  off  his 
beat?  And — who  knows? — that  may  be  only  a 
part  of  a  larger  system  of  cause  and  effect,  all  of 
it  as  hopelessly  undodgable. 

These  apprehensions  were  particularly  apt  to 
arise  if  you  had  spent  an  hour  that  day  in  seeing 
herds  of  the  English  "  common  people  "  ushered 
down  narrowing  corridors  of  barbed  wire  into 
some  gap  that  had  all  the  German  machine  guns 
raking  its  exit,  the  nature  of  Regular  officers'  pre- 
war education  in  England  precluding  the  prompt 
evolution  of  any  effectual  means  on  our  side  to 
derange  the  working  of  this  ingenious  abattoir. 
We  had  asked  for  it  all.  We  had  made  the  direct- 
ing brains  of  our  armies  the  poor  things  that  they 

200 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

were.  Small  blame  to  them  if  in  this  season  of 
liquidation  they  failed  to  produce  assets  which  we 
had  never  equipped  them  to  earn — mental  nimble- 
ness,  powers  of  individual  observation,  quickness 
to  cap  with  counter-strokes  of  invention  each  new 
device  of  the  fertile  specialists  opposite.  Being 
as  we  had  moulded  them,  they  had  probably  done 
pretty  well  in  doing  no  worse. 

What's  done  we  pardy  may  compute, 
But  know  not  what's  resisted. 

Who  shall  say  what  efforts  it  may  have  cost  some 
of  those  poor  custom-ridden  souls  not  to  veto,  for 
good  and  all,  an  engine  of  war  so  far  from 
"  smart  "  as  the  tank,  or  to  accept  any  help  at  all 
from  such  folk  as  the  new-fangled,  untraditional 
airmen,  some  of  whom  took  no  shame  to  go  forth 
to  the  fray  in  pyjamas.  Not  they  alone,  but  all  of 
ourselves,  with  our  boastful  chatter  about  the 
"  public  school  spirit,"  our  gallant,  robust  con- 
tempt for  "  swats  "  and  "  smugs  "  and  all  who 
invented  new  means  to  new  ends  and  who  trained 
and  used  their  brains  with  a  will — ^we  had  ar- 
ranged for  these  easy  battues  of  thousands  of  Eng- 
lishmen, who,  for  their  part,  did  not  fail.  To- 
morrow you  would  see  it  all  again — a  few  hundred 

201 


DISENCHANTMENT 

square  yards  of  ground  gained  by  the  deaths,  per- 
haps, of  twenty  thousand  men  who  would 

Go  to  their  graves  like  beds,  fight  for  a  plot 
Which  is  not  tomb  enough  and  continent 
To  hide  the  slain. 

So  it  would  go  on,  week  after  week,  sitting  after 
sitting  of  the  dismal  court  that  liquidated  in  the 
Flanders  mud  our  ruling  classes'  wasted  decades, 
until  we  either  lost  the  war  outright  or  were  saved 
from  utter  disaster  by  clutching  at  aid  from  French 
brains  and  American  numbers.  Like  Lucifer  when 
he  was  confronted  with  the  sky  at  night,  you 
"  looked  and  sank." 

Around  the  ancient  track  marched,  rank  on  rank, 
The  army  of  unalterable  law. 

What  had  we  done,  when  we  could,  that  the  stars 
in  their  courses  should  fight  for  us  now?  Or  left 
undone,  of  all  that  could  provoke  this  methodical 
universe  of  swinging  and  returning  forces  to  shake 
off  such  dust  from  its  constant  wheels? 

V 

"I  planted  a  set  of  blind  hopes  in  their  minds," 
said  Prometheus,  making  it  out  to  be  quite  a  good 
turn  that  he  had  done  to  mankind.     And  the  Dr. 

202 


STARS    IN    THEIR    COURSES 

Relling  of  Ibsen,  a  kind  of  Prometheus  in  general 
practice,  kept  at  hand  a  whole  medicine-chest  of 
assorted  illusions  to  dope  his  patients  with.  "  Il- 
lusion, you  know,"  said  this  sage,  "  is  the  tonic 
to  give  'em."  It  may  be.  But  even  illusions  cost 
something.  The  bill,  as  Hotspur  said  of  the  river 
Trent,  "  comes  me  cranking  in "  presently,  na- 
ture's iron  law  laying  it  down  that  the  more  superb 
your  state  of  inflation  the  deeper  shall  the  dumps 
occasioned  by  a  puncture  be.  The  Promethean 
gift  of  Mr.  Dunlop  to  our  race  undoubtedly  lifted 
the  pastime  of  cycling  out  of  a  somewhat  bumpy 
order  of  prose  into  a  lyric  heaven.  And  yet  the 
stoutest  of  all  nails  could  plunge  itself  into  the 
solid  tyre  of  old  without  compelling  you  to  walk 
a  foundered  Pegasus  from  the  top  of  the  Honister 
Pass  the  whole  way  to  Keswick,  enjoying  en  route 
neither  the  blessing  of  a  bicycle  nor  that  of  the 
unhampered  use  of  Shanks'  Mare. 

So  War,  who  keeps  such  a  pump  to  blow  you  up 
with,  and  also  such  thorns  for  your  puncturing, 
had  to  leave  us  the  "  poor  shrunken  things  "  that 
we  are,  anyhow.  It  is  as  if  the  average  man  had 
been  passing  himself  off  on  himself,  in  a  dream,  as 
the  youthful  hero  of  some  popular  drama,  and,  in 
a  rousing  last  act,  had  departed,  in  19 14,  on  ex- 
cellent terms  with  himself  and  the  audience,  bands 

203 


DISENCHANTMENT 

playing  and  flags  flying,  to  start  a  noble  and  happy 
new  life  on  the  virgin  soil  of  the  "  golden  West." 
And  now  he  awakes  in  the  "  golden  West  "  on  a 
slobbery  and  a  dirty  farm,  with  all  the  purchase 
money  still  to  pay,  and  tools  and  manures  remark- 
ably dear,  and  no  flag  visible,  nor  instrument  of 
music  audible,  and  dismal  reports  coming  in  from 
neighbouring  farmers,  and  cause  and  effect  as 
abominably  linked  one  to  another  as  ever,  and 
all  the  time  his  mind  full  of  a  sour  surmise  that 
many  sorts  of  less  credulous  men  have  "  made  a 
bit  "  of  inordinate  size  out  of  the  bit  that  he  did 
rather  than  made,  during  the  raging  and  tearing 
run  of  the  drama  now  taken  off  and,  as  far  as  may 
be,  forgotten. 


204 


C  HA  PT  ER     XII 

BELATED    BOONS 

I 

THERE  is  no  one  day  of  which  you  can 
say:  "My  youth  ended  then.  On  the 
Monday  the  ball  of  my  vision  had  eagles 
that  flew  unabashed  to  the  sun.  On  the  Tuesday 
it  hadn't."  The  season  of  rapture  goes  out  like  a 
tide  that  has  turned;  a  time  has  come  when  the 
mud  flats  are  bare;  but,  long  after  the  ebb  has  set 
in,  any  wave  that  has  taken  a  special  strength  of 
its  own  from  some  combination  of  flukes  out  at  sea 
may  cover  them  up  for  a  moment — may  even 
throw  itself  far  up  the  beach,  making  as  if  to  re- 
capture the  lost  high-water  mark.  So  the  youth 
of  our  war  had  its  feints  at  renewal,  hours  of  In- 
dian summer  when  there  was  wine  again  in  the  air; 
in  the  "  bare,  ruined  choirs  "  a  lated  golden  auri- 
cle would  strike  up  once  more  for  a  while,  before 
leaving. 

Because  hope  does  spring  eternal  the  evening 
before  a  great  battle  must  always  make  fires  leap 
up  in  the  mind.  The  calm  before  Thermopylae, 
the  rival  camps  on  the  night  before  Agincourt,  the 
ball  before  Waterloo — not  without  reason  have 
writers  of  genius,  searching  for  glimpses  of  life  in 
its  most  fugitive  acme  of  bloom,  the  poised  and 

205 


DISENCHANTMENT 

just  breaking  crest  of  the  wave,  gone  to  places  and 
times  of  the  kind.  For  there  the  wits  and  the 
heart  may  be  really  astir  and  at  gaze,  and  the  com- 
mon man  may  have,  for  the  hour,  the  artist's  vi- 
sion of  life  as  an  adventure  and  challenge,  lovely, 
harsh,  fleeting,  and  strange.  The  great  throw, 
the  new  age's  impending  nativity,  Fate  with  her 
fingers  approaching  the  veil,  about  to  lift — a  sense 
of  these  things  is  a  drug  as  strong  as  strychnine  to 
quicken  the  failing  pulse  of  the  most  heart-weary 
of  moribund  raptures. 

We  all  had  the  dope  in  our  wine  on  the  night  of 
August  7,  19 1 8.  At  daybreak  our  troops  to  the 
east  of  Amiens  would  second  the  first  blow  of 
Poch  at  the  German  salient  towards  Paris,  the 
giant  arm  that  was  now  left  sticking  out  into  the 
air  to  be  hit;  its  own  smashing  blow  had  been 
struck  without  killing;  its  first  strength  was  spent; 
the  spirit  behind  it  was  cracking;  now.  In  its  mo- 
ment of  check,  of  lost  momentum,  of  risky  exten- 
sion, now  to  have  at  it  and  smash  it.  The  bull 
had  rushed  right  on  to  gore  us  and  missed;  we  had 
his  flank  to  stab  now. 

Someone  who  dined  at  the  mess  had  just  mo- 
tored from  Paris,  through  white  dust  and  sun- 
shine and,  everywhere,  quickly  turned  heads  and 
eager  faces.     He  had  been  in  the  streets  all  the 

206 


BELATED  BOONS 

night  of  the  enemy's  last  mighty  lunge  at  the  city. 
He  spoke  of  the  silent  crowds  blackening  the  bou- 
levards through  the  few  hours  of  midsummer 
darkness;  other  crowds  on  the  sky-line  of  roofs, 
all  black  and  immobile,  the  whole  city  hushed  to 
hear  the  bombardment,  and  staring,  staring  fix- 
edly east  at  the  flame  that  incessantly  winked  in  the 
sky  above  Chateau-Thierry — history  come  to  life, 
still  enigmatic,  but  audible,  visible,  galloping 
through  the  night.  Poor  old  France,  tormented 
and  stoical,  what  could  not  the  world  forgive  her? 
Then  he  had  seen  the  news  come  the  next  day  to 
these  that  had  thus  watched  as  the  non-combatants 
watched  from  the  high  walls  of  Troy;  and  how  an 
American  had  broken  down  uncontrollably  on 
hearing  how  his  country's  Third  Division  had 
bundled  the  Germans  back  into  the  Marne :  "  We 
are  all  right!  By  God,  we  are  all  right!"  he  had 
cried,  a  whole  new  nation's  secret  self-distrust  be- 
fore a  supercilious  ancient  world  changing  into  a 
younger  boy's  ecstasy  of  relief  in  the  thought  that 
now  he  has  jolly  well  given  his  proofs  and  the 
older  boys  will  not  sneer  at  him  now,  and  he  never 
need  bluff  any  more.  Good  fellows  really,  the 
Yanks;  most  simple  and  human  as  soon  as  you 
knew  them.  One  seemed  to  know  everyone  then, 
for  that  evening, 

207 


DISENCHANTMENT 

II 

Night  came  on  cloudless  and  windless  and 
braced  with  autumn's  first  astringent  tang  of  cool- 
ness. Above,  as  I  lay  on  my  back  in  the  meadow, 
the  whole  dome  had  a  stir  of  life  in  its  shimmer- 
ing fresco,  stars  flashing  and  winking  with  that 
eager  air  of  having  great  things  to  impart — they 
have  it  on  frosty  nights  in  the  Alps,  over  a  high 
bivouac.  We  were  all  worked  up,  you  see.  Could 
it  be  coming  at  last,  I  thought  as  I  went  to  sleep — 
the  battle  unlike  other  battles?  How  many  I  had 
seen  outlive  their  little  youth  of  groundless  hope, 
from  the  approach  along  darkened  roads  through 
summer  nights,  the  eastern  sky  pulsating  with  its 
crimson  flush,  the  wild  glow  always  leaping  up 
and  always  drawing  in,  and  the  waiting  cavalry's 
lances  upright,  black  and  multitudinous  in  road- 
side fields,  impaling  the  blenching  sky  just  above 
the  horizon;  and  then,  in  the  bald  dawn,  the 
backward  trickles  of  wastage  swelling  into  great 
streams  or  rather  endless  friezes  seen  in  silhouette 
across  the  fields,  the  trailing  processions  of  wound- 
ed, English  and  German,  on  foot  and  on  stretch- 
ers, dripping  so  much  blood  that  some  of  the 
tracks  were  flamboyantly  marked  for  miles  across 
country;  and  then  the  evening's  reports,  with  their 

208 


BELATED  BOONS 

anxious  efforts  to  show  that  we  had  gained  some- 
thing worth  having.  Was  it  to  be  only  Loos  and 
the  Somme  and  Arras  and  Flanders  and  Cambrai, 
all  over  again? 

Thought  must  have  passed  into  dream  when  I 
was  awakened  by  some  bird  that  may  have  had  a 
dream  too  and  had  fallen  right  off  its  perch  in  a 
bush  near  my  head,  with  a  disconcerted  squeak  and 
a  scuffling  sound  among  dry  leaves.  Opening  my 
eyes,  I  found  that  a  thickish  veil  was  drawn  over 
the  stars.  When  I  sat  up  the  veil  was  gone;  my 
eyes  were  above  it;  a  quilt  of  white  mist,  about  a 
foot  thick,  had  spread  itself  over  the  meadow. 
Good!  Let  it  thicken  away  and  be  shoes  of  silence 
and  armour  of  darkness  at  dawn  for  our  men. 
Soon  night's  habitual  sounds  brought  on  sleep 
again.  An  owl  in  the  wood  by  the  little  chalk 
stream  would  hoot,  patiently  wait  for  the  answer- 
ing call  that  should  come,  and  then  hoot  again, 
and  listen  again.  The  low,  dry,  continuous  buzz 
of  an  aeroplane  engine,  more  evenly  humming 
than  any  of  ours,  droned  itself  into  hearing  and 
softly  ascended  the  scale  of  audibility;  overhead, 
as  the  enemy  passed,  was  slowly  drawn  across  the 
sky  from  east  to  west  a  line  of  momentarily  ob- 
scured stars,  each  coming  back  into  sight  as  the 
next  one  was  deleted.     In  the  east  the  low,  slow 

209 


DISENCHANTMENT 

grumbling  sound  of  a  few  guns  from  fifty  miles 
of  front  seemed,  in  its  approach  to  quietude,  like 
the  audible  breath  of  a  sleeper.  The  war  was 
taking  its  rest. 

Some  sort  of  musing  half-dream  about  summer 
heaths,  buzzing  with  bees,  was  jarred  by  the  big 
blunted  sound,  distant  and  dull,  of  wooden  boxes 
tumbling  down  wooden  stairs,  "  off,"  as  they  do 
in  a  farce.  Of  course — that  night-bomber  unload- 
ing on  St.  Omer,  Abbeville,  Etaples,  some  one  of 
the  usual  marks.  But  now  there  was  something 
to  wake  for.  Not  a  star  to  be  seen.  I  jumped 
up  and  found  the  mist  thick  to  my  armpits,  and 
rising.  Oh,  good,  good!  Our  men  would  walk 
safe  as  the  attacking  Germans  had  walked  in  the 
mist  of  that  lovely  and  fatal  morning  in  March. 
I  slept  hard  till  two  o'clock  came — time  to  get 
up  for  work.  The  mist  was  doing  its  best;  it 
seemed  to  fill  the  whole  wide  vessel  of  the  uni- 
verse. 

Ill 

Ten  miles  to  the  east  of  Amiens  a  steep-sided 
ridge  divides  the  converging  rivers  of  Ancre  and 
Som.me.  They  meet  where  it  sinks,  at  Its  western 
end.  Into  the  plain.  From  the  ridge  there  was, 
in  pre-war  days,  a  beautiful  view.     On  the  south 

210 


BELATED    BOONS 

the  ground  fell  from  your  feet  abruptly,  a  kind 
of  earth  cliff,  to  the  north  bank  of  the  Somme, 
about  a  hundred  feet  below.  Southwards,  beyond 
the  river,  stretched,  as  far  as  eye  could  see,  the 
expanse  of  the  level  Santerre,  one  of  France's  best 
cornlands.  South-eastward  you  looked  up  the 
Somme  valley,  mile  after  mile,  towards  Bray  and 
Peronne — a  shining  valley  of  poplars  and  stream 
and  linked  ponds  and  red-roofed  villages  among 
the  poplars.  But  now  the  Santerre  lay  untilled, 
gone  back  to  heath  of  a  faded  fawn-grey.  The 
red  roofs  had  been  shelled;  the  Germans  pos- 
sessed them;  the  Germans  held  the  blasted  heath, 
across  the  river;  other  Germans  held  most  of 
the  ridge  on  this  side  to  a  mile  or  so  east  of  the 
point  to  which  I  was  posted  that  morning.  Eng- 
lish troops  were  to  carry  the  eastern  end  of  the 
ridge  and  the  tricky  low  ground  between  it  and 
the  Somme.  Australian  and  Canadian  troops 
were  to  attack  on  a  broad  front,  out  on  the  level 
Santerre,  across  the  river  and  under  our  eyes. 

But  there  was  no  seeing.  The  mist,  in  billowy, 
bolster-like  masses,  wallowed  and  rolled  about 
at  the  touch  of  light  airs;  at  one  moment  a  figure 
some  thirty  yards  off  could  be  seen  and  then  a 
thickened  whiteness  would  rub  it  out;  down  the 
earth   cliff   we   looked   into    a   cauldron   of    that 

211 


DISENCHANTMENT 

seething  milky  opaqueness.  Of  what  might  go 
on  in  that  pit  of  enigma  the  eye  could  tell  noth- 
ing; the  mind  hung  on  what  news  might  come 
through  the  ear.  We  knew  that  there  was  to 
be  no  prior  bombardment;  the  men  would  start 
with  the  barrage  and  go  for  five  miles  across 
the  Santerre  if  they  could,  pushing  the  enemy  off 
it.  The  stage  was  set,  the  play  of  plays  was 
about  to  begin  on  the  broad  stage  below;  only, 
between  our  eyes  and  the  boards  there  was  hung 
a  white  curtain. 

Up  the  cliff,  fumbling  and  muted,  came  the 
first  burst  of  the  barrage,  suggesting,  as  barrages 
usually  do,  a  race  between  sounds,  a  piece  bang- 
ingly  played  against  time  on  a  keyboard.  Now 
the  men  would  be  rising  full  length  above  earth 
and  walking  out  with  smoking  breath  and  be- 
jewelled eyebrows  into  the  infested  mist.  Then 
our  guns,  for  an  interval,  fell  almost  silent — first 
lift  of  the  barrage — a  chance  for  hungry  ears  to 
assess  the  weight  of  the  enemy's  answering  gun- 
fire. Surely,  surely  it  had  not  all  the  volume  it 
had  had  at  Arras  and  Ypres  last  year.  And  then 
down  came  our  barrage  again,  like  one  rifle-bolt 
banging  home,  and  all  thought  was  again  with 
the  friends  before  whose  faces  the  wall  of  splash- 

212 


BELATED  BOONS 

ing  metal,  earth,  and  flame  had  just  risen  and 
moved  on  ahead  like  the  pillars  of  fire  and  cloud. 
Hours  passed,  bringing  the  usual  changes  of 
sounds  in  battles.  The  piece  that  had  started 
so  rapidly  on  the  piano  slowed  down;  the  notes 
spaced  themselves  out;  the  first  continuous  bark- 
ing of  many  guns  slackened  off  irregularly  into 
Isolated  barks  and  groups  of  barks — just  what  you 
hear  from  a  dog  whose  temper  is  subsiding,  with 
occasional  returns.  That,  in  itself,  told  nothing. 
Troops  might  only  have  gained  a  few  hundred 
yards  In  the  old  Flanders  way,  and  then  flopped 
down  to  dig  and  be  murdered.  Or — but  one  kept 
a  tight  hand  on  hope.  One  had  hoped  too  often 
since  Loos,  And  then  the  mist  lifted.  It  rolled 
right  up  into  the  sky  in  one  piece,  like  a  theatre 
curtain,  almost  suddenly  taking  its  white  quilted 
thickness  away  from  between  our  eyes  and  the 
vision  so  much  longed  for  during  four  years. 
Beyond  the  river  a  miracle — the  miracle — had 
begun.  It  was  going  on  fast.  Remember  that  all 
previous  advances  had  gained  us  little  more  than 
freedom  to  skulk  up  communication  trenches  a 
mile  or  two  further  eastward.  If  that.  But  now! 
Across  the  level  Santerre,  which  the  sun  was 
beginning  to  fill  with  a  mist-filtered  lustre,  two 
endless    columns    of   British   guns,    wagons,    and 

213 


DISENCHANTMENT 

troops  were  marching  steadily  east,  unshelled, 
over  the  ground  that  the  Germans  had  held  until 
dawn. 

Nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  seen  in  the  war. 
Above,  on  our  cliff,  we  turned  and  stared  at 
each  other.  We  must  have  looked  rather  like 
Cortes'  men  agape  on  their  peak.  The  marvel 
seemed  real;  the  road  lay  open  and  dry  across 
the  Red  Sea.  Far  off,  six  thousand  yards  off 
in  the  shining  south-east,  tanks  and  cavalry  were 
at  work,  shifting  and  gleaming  and  looking  huge 
on  the  sky-line  of  some  little  rumpled  fold  of  the 
Santerre  plateau.  Nearer,  the  glass  could  make 
out  an  enemy  battery,  captured  complete,  caught 
with  the  leather  caps  still  on  the  muzzles  of  guns. 
The  British  dead  on  the  plain,  horses  and  men, 
lay  scattered  thinly  over  wide  spaces;  scarcely 
a  foundered  tank  could  be  seen;  the  ground  had 
turf  on  it  still;  it  was  only  speckled  with  shell- 
holes,  not  disembowelled  or  flayed.  The  war  had 
put  on  a  sort  of  benignity,  coming  out  gallantly 
on  the  top  of  the  earth  and  moving  about  in  the 
air  and  the  sun;  the  warm  heath,  with  so  few 
dead  upon  it,  looked  almost  clement  and  kind, 
almost  gay  after  the  scabrous  mud  wastes  and 
the  stink  of  the  captured  dug-outs  of  the  Salient, 
piled  up  to  ground-level  with  corpses,  some  feet 

214 


BELATED  BOONS 

uppermost,  some  heads,  like  fish  in  a  basket,  mak- 
ing you  think  what  wonderful  numbers  there  are 
of  mankind.  For  a  moment,  the  object  of  all 
dream  and  desire  seemed  to  have  come;  the 
flaming  sword  was  gone,  and  the  gate  of  the 
garden  open. 

Too  late,  as  you  know.  We  awoke  from  de- 
light, and  remembered.  Four  years  ago,  three 
years  ago,  even  two  years  ago,  a  lasting  repose 
of  beatitude  might  have  come  with  that  regain- 
ing of  paradise!  Now!  The  control  of  our 
armies,  jealously  hugged  for  so  long  and  used, 
on  the  whole,  to  so  little  purpose,  had  passed  from 
us,  thrown  up  in  a  moment  of  failure,  dissension 
and  dread.  While  still  outnumbered  by  the  enemy 
we  had  not  won;  while  on  even  terms  with  him 
we  had  not  won;  only  under  a  foreign  Com- 
mander-in-Chief, and  with  America's  inexhaustible 
numbers  crowding  behind  to  hold  up  our  old 
arms,  had  our  just  cause  begun  to  prevail.  And 
now  the  marred  triumph  would  leave  us  jaded  and 
disillusioned,  divided,  half  bankrupt;  sneerers  at 
lofty  endeavour,  and  yet  not  the  men  for  the 
plodding  of  busy  and  orderly  peace;  bilious  with 
faiths  and  enthusiasms  gone  sour  in  the  stomach. 
That  very  night  I  was  to  hear  the  old  Australian 
sneer   again.      The   British   corps   on   their   left, 

215 


DISENCHANTMENT 

at  work  in  the  twisty  valley  and  knucklesome 
banks  of  the  Somme,  had  failed  to  get  on  quite 
as  fast  as  they  and  the  Canadian  troops  on  their 
right.  "  The  Canadians  were  all  right  of  course, 
but  the  Tommies  !  Well,  we  might  have  known  !  " 
They  had  got  rid,  they  chuckingly  said,  of  their 
own  last  "  Tommy  officers  "  now;  they  wanted  to 
have  it  quite  clear  that  in  England's  war  record 
they  were  not  involved  except  as  our  saviours 
from  our  sorry  selves. 

IV 
There  were  other  days,  during  the  following 
months  of  worm-eaten  success,  when  some  mirage 
of  the  greater  joys  which  we  had  forfeited  hung 
for  a  few  moments  over  the  sand.  It  must  be 
always  a  strange  delight  to  an  infantryman  to 
explore  at  his  ease,  in  security,  ground  that  to 
him  has  been  almost  as  unimaginable  as  events 
after  death.  There  is  no  describing  the  vesture  of 
enigmatic  remoteness  enfolding  a  long-watched 
enemy  line.  Tolstoy  has  tried,  but  even  he  does 
not  come  up  to  it.  Virgil  alone  has  expressed 
one  sensation  of  the  British  overflow  over  Lille 
and  Cambria,  Menin  (even  the  Menin  Road  had 
an  end)  and  Bruges  and  Ostend,  Le  Cateau  and 
Landrecies,  Liege  and  Namur — 

216 


BELATED  BOONS 

Juvat  ire  et  Dorica  castra 
Desertosque  videre  locos,  Htusque  relictum. 
Classibus  hie  locus,  hie  acie  certare  solebant, 
Hie  Dolopum  manus,  hie  saevus  tendebat  Achilles. 

And  then,  wherever  you  went,  till  the  frontier 
was  reached,  everyone  was  your  host  and  your 
friend;  all  the  relations  of  strangers  to  one  an- 
other had  been  transfigured  into  the  sum  of  all 
kindness  and  courtesy.  In  one  mining  village  in 
Flanders,  quitted  that  day  by  the  Germans,  a 
woman  rushed  out  of  a  house  to  give  me  a  lump 
of  bread,  thinking  that  we  must  all  be  as  hungry 
as  she  and  her  neighbours.  Late  one  night  in 
Brussels,  just  after  the  Germans  had  gone,  I 
was  walking  with  another  officer  down  the  chief 
street  of  the  city,  then  densely  crowded  with  radi- 
ant citizens.  My  friend  had  a  wooden  stump 
leg  and  could  not  walk  very  well;  and  this  figure 
of  a  khaki-clad  man,  maimed  in  the  discharge 
of  an  Allied  obligation  to  Belgium,  seemed  sud- 
denly and  almost  simultaneously  to  be  seen  by 
the  whole  of  that  great  crowd  in  all  its  symbolic 
value,  so  that  the  crowd  fell  silent  and  opened 
out  spontaneously  along  the  whole  length  of  the 
street  and  my  friend  had  to  hobble  down  the 
middle  of  a  long  avenue  of  bare-headed  men  and 
bowing  women. 

217 


DISENCHANTMENT 

Finally — last  happy  thrill  of  the  war — the  first 
stroke  of  eleven  o'clock,  on  the  morning  of  Arm- 
istice Day,  on  the  town  clock  of  Mons,  only  cap- 
tured that  morning;  Belgian  civilians  and  British 
soldiers  crowding  together  into  the  square,  shak- 
ing each  other's  hands  and  singing  each  other's 
national  anthems;  a  little  toy-like  peal  of  bells 
in  the  church  contriving  to  tinkle  out  "  Tipper- 
ary  "  for  our  welcome,  while  our  airmen,  released 
from  their  labours,  tumbled  and  romped  over- 
head like  boys  turning  cartwheels  with  ecstasy. 

What  a  victory  it  might  have  been — the  real, 
the  Winged  Victory,  chivalric,  whole  and  un- 
stained !  The  bride  that  our  feckless  wooing  had 
sought  and  not  won  in  the  generous  youth  of 
the  war  had  come  to  us  now:  an  old  woman,  or 
dead,  she  no  longer  refused  us.  We  had  arrived, 
like  the  prince  in  the  poem — 

Too  late  for  love,  too  late  for  joy, 

Too  late,  too  late ! 
You  loitered  on  the  road  too  long, 

You  trifled  at  the  gate: 
The  enchanted  dove  upon  her  branch 

Died  without  a  mate; 
The  enchanted  princess  in  her  tower 

Slept,  died  behind  the  grate: 
Her  heart  was  starving  all  this  while 

You  made  it  wait. 


2l8 


CHAPTER     XIII 

THE    OLD   AGE    OF    THE    WAR 


MEN  wearying  in  trenches  used  to  tell  one 
another  sometimes  what  they  fancied 
the  end  of  the  war  would  be  like.  Each 
had  his  particular  favourite  vision.  Some  morn- 
ing the  Captain  would  come  down  the  trench  at 
"  stand-to  "  and  try  to  speak  as  if  it  were  nothing. 
"  All  right,  men,"  he  would  say,  "  you  can  go 
across  and  shake  hands."  Or  the  first  thing  we 
should  hear  would  be  some  jubilant  peal  suddenly 
shaken  out  on  the  air  from  the  nearest  standing 
church  in  the  rear.  But  the  commonest  vision  was 
that  of  marching  down  a  road  to  a  wide,  shin- 
ing river.  Once  more  the  longing  of  a  multitude 
struggling  slowly  across  a  venomous  wilderness 
fixed  itself  on  the  first  glimpse  of  a  Jordan  be- 
yond; for  most  men  the  Rhine  was  the  physical 
goal  of  effort,  the  term  of  endurance,  the  symbol 
of  all  attainment  and  rest. 

To  win  what  your  youth  had  desired,  and  find 
the  taste  of  it  gone,  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  stand- 
ard pains  of  old  age.  With  a  kind  of  blank  space 
in  their  minds  where  the  joy  of  fulfilment  ought 
to  have  been,  two  British  privates  of  19 14,  now 
Captains  attached  to  the  Staff,  emerged  from  the 

219 


DISENCHANTMENT 

narrow  and  crowded  High  Street  of  Cologne  on 
December  7,  19 18,  crossed  the  Cathedral  square, 
and  gained  their  first  sight  of  the  Rhine.  As 
they  stood  on  the  Hohenzollern  bridge  and  looked 
at  the  mighty  breadth  of  rushing  stream,  each  of 
them  certainly  gave  his  heart  leave  to  leap  up 
if  it  would  and  if  it  could.  Had  they  not,  by 
toil  and  entreaty,  gained  permission  to  enter  the 
city  with  our  first  cavalry?  Were  they  not  put- 
ting their  lips  to  the  first  glass  of  the  sparkling 
vintage  of  victory?  Neither  of  them  said  any- 
thing then.  The  heart  that  knoweth  its  own  bit- 
terness need  not  always  avow  it  straight  off. 
But  they  were  friends;  they  told  afterwards. 

The  first  hours  of  that  ultimate  winding-up  of 
the  old,  long-decayed  estate  of  hopes  and  illusions 
were  not  the  worst,  either.  The  cavalry  briga- 
dier in  command  at  Cologne,  those  first  few  days, 
was  a  man  with  a  good  fighting  record;  and  now 
his  gesture  towards  the  conquered  was  that  of  the 
happy  warrior,  that  of  Virgilian  Rome,  that  of 
the  older  England  in  hours  of  victory.  German 
civilians  clearly  expected  some  kind  of  mal-treat- 
ment,  such  perhaps  as  their  own  scum  had  given 
to  Belgians.  They  strove  with  desperate  care 
to  be  correct  in  their  bearing,  neither  to  jostle 
us  accidentally  in  the  streets  nor  to  shrink  away 

220 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

from  us  pointedly.  Soon,  to  their  surprise  and 
shame,  they  found  that  among  the  combatant 
English  there  lingered  the  hobby  of  acting  like 
those  whom  the  Germans  had  known  through 
their  Shakespeare :  "  We  give  express  charge  that 
in  our  marches  through  the  country  there  be 
nothing  compelled  from  the  villages,  nothing 
taken  but  paid  for,  none  of  the  French  upbraided 
or  abused  in  disdainful  language." 

The  "  cease  fire  "  order  on  Armistice  Day  had 
forbidden  all  "  fraternizing."  But  any  man  who 
has  fought  with  a  sword,  or  its  equivalent,  knows 
more  about  that  than  the  man  who  has  only  blown 
with  a  trumpet.  To  men  who  for  years  have 
lived  like  foxes  or  badgers,  dodging  their  way 
from  each  day  of  being  alive  to  the  next,  there 
comes  back  more  easily,  after  a  war,  a  sense  of 
the  tacit  league  that  must,  in  mere  decency,  bind 
together  all  who  cling  precariously  to  life  on  a 
half-barren  ball  that  goes  spinning  through  space. 
All  castaways  together,  all  really  marooned  on  the 
one  desert  island,  they  know  that,  however  hard 
we  may  have  to  fight  to  sober  a  bully  or  guard 
to  each  man  his  share  of  the  shell-fish  and  clams, 
we  all  have  to  come  back  at  last  to  the  joint  work 
of  making  the  island  more  fit  to  live  on.  The 
gesture  of  the  decimated   troops  who  held   Co- 

221 


DISENCHANTMENT 

logne  at  the  end  of  that  year  was,  in  essence,  that 
of  the  cavalry  brigadiers.  Sober  or  drunk,  the 
men  were  contumaciously  sportsmen,  incorrigibly 
English.  One  might  before  Christmas  I  thought 
I  heard  voices  outside  my  quarters  long  after 
curfew,  and  went  to  look  out  from  my  balcony 
high  up  in  the  Domhof  into  the  moon-flooded 
expanse  of  the  Cathedral  square  below.  By  rights 
there  should  have  been  no  figures  there  at  that 
hour,  German  or  British.  But  there  were  three; 
two  tipsy  Highlanders — "  Women  from  Hell," 
as  German  soldiers  used  to  call  the  demonic  stab- 
bers  in  kilts — gravely  dispensing  the  consolations 
of  chivalry  to  a  stout  burgher  of  Cologne.  "  Och, 
dinna  tak'  it  to  hairrt,  mon.  I  tell  ye  that  your 
lads  were  grond."  It  was  like  a  last  leap  of 
the  flame  that  had  burnt  clear  and  high  four  years 
before. 

II 

For  the  day  of  the  fighting  man,  him  and  his 
chivalric  hobbies,  was  over.  The  guns  had  hardly 
ceased  to  fire  before  from  the  rear,  from  the 
bases,  from  London,  there  came  flooding  up  the 
braves  who  for  all  those  four  years  had  been 
squealing  threats  and  abuse,  some  of  them  beg- 
ging off  service  in  arms  on  the  plea  that  squeal- 

222 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

ing  was  indispensable  national  work.  We  had  not 
been  long  in  Cologne  when  there  arrived  in  hot 
haste  a  young  pressman  from  London,  one  of  the 
first  of  a  swarm.  He  looked  a  fine  strong  man. 
He  seemed  to  be  one  of  the  male  Vestals  who  have 
it  for  their  trade  to  feed  the  eternal  flame  of 
hatred  between  nations,  instead  of  cleaning  out 
stables  or  doing  some  other  work  fit  for  a  male. 
His  train  had  fortunately  brought  him  just  in 
time  for  luncheon.  This  he  ate  and  drank  with 
goodwill,  complaining  only  that  the  wine,  which 
seemed  to  me  good,  was  not  better.  He  then 
slept  on  his  bed  until  tea-time.  Reanimated  with 
tea,  he  said  genially,  "  Well,  I  must  be  getting 
on  with  my  mission  of  hate,"  and  retired  to  his 
room  to  write  a  vivacious  account  of  the  wealth 
and  luxury  of  Cologne,  the  guzzling  in  all  cafes 
and  restaurants,  the  fair  round  bellies  of  all  the 
working  class,  the  sleek  and  rosy  children  of  the 
poor.  I  read  it,  two  days  after,  in  his  paper. 
Our  men  who  had  helped  to  fight  Germany  down 
were  going  short  of  food  at  the  time,  through 
feeding  the  children  in  houses  where  they  were 
billeted.  "  Proper  Zoo  there  is  in  this  place," 
one  of  them  told  me.  "  Proper  lions  and  tigers. 
Me  and  my  friend  are  taking  the  kids  from  our 
billet  soon's  we've  got  them  fatted  up  a  bit.     If 

223 


DISENCHANTMENT 

you'll  believe  me,  sir,  them  kiddies  ain't  safe 
in  a  Zoo.  They  could  walk  in  through  the  bars 
and  get  patting  the  lions."  I  had  just  seen  some 
of  the  major  carnivora  in  their  cages  close  to 
the  Rhine,  each  a  rectangular  lamina  of  fur  and 
bone  like  the  tottering  cats  I  had  seen  pass 
through  incredible  slits  of  space  in  Amiens  a 
month  after  the  people  had  fled  from  the  city 
that  spring.  But  little  it  mattered  in  London 
what  he  or  I  saw.  The  nimble  scamps  had  the 
ear  of  the  world;  what  the  soldier  said  was  not 
evidence. 

Some  Allied  non-combatants  did  almost  un- 
thinkable things  in  the  first  ecstasy  of  the  triumph 
that  others  had  won.  One  worthy  drove  into 
Cologne  in  a  car  plastered  over  with  Union  Jacks, 
like  a  minor  bookie  going  to  Epsom.  It  passed 
the  wit  of  man  to  make  him  understand  that  one 
does  not  do  these  things  to  defeated  peoples. 
But  he  could  understand,  with  some  help,  that  our 
Commander-in-Chief  alone  was  entitled  to  carry 
a  Union  Jack  on  his  car.  "  We  must  show  these 
fellows  our  power";  that  was  the  form  of  the 
licence  taken  out  by  every  churl  in  spirit  who 
wanted  to  let  his  coltish  nature  loose  on  a  waiter 
or  barber  in  some  German  hotel.  I  saw  one  such 
gallant  assert  the  majesty  of  the  Allies  by  refusing 

224 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

to  pay  more  than  half  the  prices  put  down  on 
the  wine-Hst.  Another  would  send  a  waiter  across 
an  hotel  dining-room  to  order  a  quiet  party  of 
German  men  and  women  not  to  speak  so  loud. 
Another  was  all  for  inflicting  little  bullying  in- 
dignities on  the  editor  of  the  Kolnische  Zeitung — 
making  him  print  as  matters  of  fact  our  versions 
of  old  cases  of  German  misconduct,  etc.  Prob- 
ably he  did  not  even  know  that  the  intended 
exhibition-ground  for  these  deplorable  tricks  was 
one  of  the  great  journals  of  Europe. 

Not  everybody,  not  even  every  non-combatant 
in  the  dress  of  a  soldier,  had  caught  that  shabby 
epidemic  of  spite.  But  it  was  rife.  It  had  be- 
come a  fashion  to  have  it,  as  in  some  raffish  circles 
it  is  a  fashion  at  times  to  have  some  rakish  dis- 
ease. In  the  German  mihtary  cemetery  at  Lille 
I  have  heard  a  man  reared  at  one  of  our  most 
famous  public  schools  and  our  most  noble  uni- 
versity, and  then  wearing  our  uniform,  say  that 
he  thought  the  French  might  do  well  to  desecrate 
all  the  German  soldiers'  graves  on  French  soil. 
Another,  at  Brussels,  commended  a  Belgian  who 
was  said  to  have  stripped  his  wife  naked  in  one  of 
the  streets  of  that  city  and  cut  off  her  hair  on 
some  airy  suspicion  of  an  affair  with  a  German 
officer   during   the    enemy's    occupation.      A   fine 

225 


DISENCHANTMENT 

sturdy  sneer  at  the  notion  of  doing  anything  chiv- 
alrous was  by  this  time  the  mode.  "  I  hope  to 
God,"  an  oldish  and  highly  non-combatant  gen- 
eral said,  in  discussing  the  probable  terms  of 
peace  with  a  younger  general  who  had  begun  the 
war  as  a  full  lieutenant  and  fought  hard  all  the 
way  up,  "  that  there's  going  to  be  no  rot  about 
not  kicking  a  man  when  he's  down."  The  junior 
general  grunted.  He  did  not  agree.  But  he 
clearly  felt  shy  of  protesting.  Worshippers  of 
setting  suns  feel  ill  at  ease  In  discussion  with 
these  bright,  confident  fellows  who  swear  by  the 
rising  one. 

Ill 

The  senior  general  need  not  have  feared.  The 
generous  youth  of  the  war,  when  England  could 
carry,  with  no  air  of  burlesque,  the  flag  of  St. 
George,  was  pretty  well  gone.  The  authentic 
flame  might  still  flicker  on  in  the  minds  of  a  few 
tired  soldiers  and  disregarded  civilians.  Other- 
wise it  was  as  dead  as  the  half-million  of  good 
fellows  whom  it  had  fired  four  years  ago,  whose 
credulous  hearts  the  maggots  were  now  eating 
under  so  many  shining  and  streaming  square  miles 
of  wet  Flanders  and  Picardy.  They  gone,  their 
war  had   lived  into   a   kind  of  dotage   ruled  by 

226 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

mean  fears  and  desires.  At  home  our  places  of 
honour  were  brown  with  shirkers  masquerading  in 
the  dead  men's  clothes  and  licensed  by  careless 
authorities  to  shelter  themselves  from  all  danger 
under  the  titles  of  Colonel,  Major,  and  Captain. 
Nimble  politicians  were  rushing  already  to  coin 
into  votes  for  themselves — "  the  men  who  won 
the  war  " — the  golden  memory  of  the  dead  be- 
fore the  living  could  come  home  and  make  them- 
selves heard.  Sounds  of  a  general  election,  the 
yells  of  political  cheap-jacks,  the  bawling  of  some 
shabby  promise,  capped  by  some  shabbier  bawl, 
made  their  way  out  to  Cologne. 

"  This  way,  gents,  for  the  right  sort  of  whip 
to  give  Germans!"  "Rats,  gentlemen,  rats! 
Don't  listen  to  him.  Leave  it  to  me  and  I'll 
chastise  'em  with  scorpions."  "  FU  devise  the 
brave  punishments  for  them."  "  Ah,  but  Fll 
sweat  you  more  money  out  of  the  swine."  That 
was  the  gist  of  the  din  that  most  of  the  gramo- 
phones of  the  home  press  gave  out  on  the  Rhine. 
Each  little  demagogue  had  got  his  little  pots 
of  pitch  and  sulphur  on  sale  for  the  proper  giving 
of  hell  to  the  enemy  whom  he  had  not  faced. 
Germany  lay  at  our  feet,  a  world's  wonder  of 
downfall,  a  very  Lucifer,  fallen,  broken,  bereaved 
beyond    all    the    retributive    griefs   which   Greek 

227 


DISENCHANTMENT 

tragedy  shows  you  afflicting  the  great  who  were 
insolent,  wilful,  and  proud.  But  it  was  not  enough 
for  our  small  epicures  of  revenge.  They  wanted  to 
twist  the  enemy's  wrists,  where  he  lay  bound,  and 
to  run  pins  into  his  eyes.  And  they  had  the 
upper  hand  of  us  now.  The  soldiers  could  only 
look  on  while  the  scurvy  performance  dragged 
itself  out  till  the  meanest  of  treaties  was  signed 
at  Versailles.  "Fatal  Versailles!  "  as  General  Sir 
Ian  Hamilton  said  for  us  all;  "  Not  a  line — not 
one  line  in  your  treaty  to  show  that  those  boys 
(our  friends  who  were  dead)  had  been  any  better 
than  the  emperors;  not  one  line  to  stand  for  the 
kindliness  of  England;  not  one  word  to  bring  back 
some  memory  of  the  generosity  of  her  sons!" 
"  The  freedom  of  Europe,"  "  The  war  to  end 
war,"  "  The  overthrow  of  militarism,"  "  The 
cause  of  civilization  " — most  people  believe  so 
little  now  in  anything  or  anyone  that  they  would 
find  it  hard  to  understand  the  simplicity  and  in- 
tensity of  faith  with  which  these  phrases  were 
once  taken  among  our  troops,  or  the  certitude 
felt  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  who  are 
now  dead  that  if  they  were  killed  their  monument 
would  be  a  new  Europe  not  soured  or  soiled  with 
the  hates  and  greeds  of  the  old.  That  the  old 
spirit    of    Prussia    might   not    infest    our    world 

228 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

any  more;  that  they  or,  if  not  they,  their  sons 
might  breathe  a  new,  cleaner  air  they  had  willingly 
hung  themselves  up  to  rot  on  the  uncut  wire  at 
Loos  or  wriggled  to  death,  slow  hour  by  hour, 
in  the  cold  filth  at  Broodseinde.  Now  all  was 
done  that  man  could  do,  and  all  was  done  in 
vain.  The  old  spirit  of  Prussia  was  blowing 
anew,  from  strange  mouths.  From  several  spe- 
cies of  men  who  passed  for  English — as  mongrels, 
curs,  shoughs,  water-rugs,  and  demi-wolves  are 
all  clept  by  the  name  of  dogs — there  was  rising 
a  chorus  of  shrill  yelps  for  the  outdoing  of  all 
the  base  folly  committed  by  Prussia  when  drunk 
with  her  old  conquest  of  France.  Prussia,  beaten 
out  of  the  field,  had  won  in  the  souls  of  her  con- 
querors' rulers;  they  had  become  her  pupils;  they 
took  her  word  for  it  that  she,  and  not  the  older 
England,  knew  how  to  use  victory. 

IV 

Sir  Douglas  Haig  came  to  Cologne  when  we 
had  been  there  a  few  days.  On  the  grandiose 
bridge  over  the  Rhine  he  made  a  short  speech 
to  a  few  of  us.  Most  of  it  sounded  as  if  the 
thing  were  a  job  he  had  got  to  get  through  with, 
and  did  not  much  care  for.  Perhaps  the  speech, 
like  those  of  other  great  men  who  wisely  hate 

229 


DISENCHANTMENT 

making  speeches,  had  been  written  for  him  by 
somebody  else.  But  once  he  looked  up  from  the 
paper  and  put  in  some  words  which  I  felt  sure 
were  his  own;  "I  only  hope  that,  now  we  have 
won,  we  shall  not  lose  our  heads,  as  the  Germans 
did  after  1870.  It  has  brought  them  to  this." 
He  looked  at  the  gigantic  mounted  statue  of  the 
Kaiser  overhead,  a  thing  crying  out  in  its  pride 
for  fire  from  heaven  to  fall  and  consume  it,  and 
at  the  homely,  squat  British  sentry  moving  below 
on  his  post.  I  think  the  speech  was  reported. 
But  none  of  our  foremen  at  home  took  any  notice 
of  it  at  all.  They  knew  a  trick  worth  two  of 
Haig's.  They  were  as  moonstruck  as  any  victori- 
ous Prussian. 

So  we  had  failed — had  won  the  fight  and  lost 
the  prize;  the  garland  of  the  war  was  withered 
before  it  was  gained.  The  lost  years,  the  broken 
youth,  the  dead  friends,  the  women's  overshad- 
owed lives  at  home,  the  agony  and  bloody  sweat — 
all  had  gone  to  darken  the  stains  which  most  of 
us  had  thought  to  scour  out  of  the  world  that 
our  children  would  live  in.  Many  men  felt,  and 
said  to  each  other,  that  they  had  been  fooled. 
They  had  believed  that  their  country  was  backing 
them.  They  had  thought,  as  they  marched  into 
Germany,   "  Now  we  shall  show  old  Fritz  how 

230 


THE    OLD    AGE    OF    THE    WAR 

you  treat  a  man  when  you've  thrashed  him."  They 
would  let  him  into  the  English  secret,  the  tip  that 
the  power  and  glory  are  not  to  the  bully.  As 
some  of  them  looked  at  the  melancholy  perform- 
ance which  followed,  our  Press  and  our  politi- 
cians parading  at  Paris  in  moral  pickelhauben  and 
doing  the  Prussianist  goose-step  by  way  of  pas  de 
triomphe,  they  could  not  but  say  in  dismay  to 
themselves :  "  This  is  our  doing.  We  cannot  wish 
the  war  unwon,  and  yet — if  we  had  shirked,  poor 
old  England,  for  all  we  know,  might  not  have 
come  to  this  pass.  So  we  come  home  draggle- 
tailed,  sick  of  the  mess  that  we  were  unwittingly 
helping  to  make  when  we  tried  to  do  well. 


231 


CHAPTER     XIV 

OUR     MODERATE     SATANISTS 

I 

SATANISM  is  one  of  the  words  that  most 
of  us  simple  people  have  heard  others  use; 
we  guiltily  feel  that  we  ought  to  know  what 
it  means,  but  do  not  quite  like  to  ask,  lest  we  ex- 
pose the  nakedness  of  the  land.  Then  comes  Pro- 
fessor Gilbert  Murray,  one  of  the  few  learned 
men  who  are  able  to  make  a  thing  clear  to  people 
not  quite  like  themselves,  and  tells  us  all  about 
it  in  a  cheap,  small  book,  easy  to  read.  It  seems 
that  the  Satanists,  or  the  pick  of  the  sect,  were 
Bohemian  Protestants  at  the  start,  and  quite 
plain,  poor  men  from  the  country. 

"  Every  person  in  authority  met  them  with  rack  and 
sword,  cursed  their  religious  leaders  as  emissaries  of  the 
Devil,  and  punished  them  for  all  the  things  which  they 
considered  holy.  The  earth  was  the  Lord's,  and  the 
Pope  and  Emperor  were  the  vicegerents  of  God  upon  the 
earth.  So  they  were  told;  and  in  time  they  accepted  the 
statement.  That  was  the  division  of  the  world.  On  the 
one  side  God,  Pope  and  Emperor,  and  the  army  of 
persecutors;  on  the  other  themselves,  downtrodden  and 
poor  .  .  ." 

How  easy  to  understand !  In  crude  works  of 
non-imagination  the  wicked,  repente  turpissimus, 
suddenly  says,  some  fine  morning,  "  Evil,  be  thou 

232 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

my  good."  In  life  the  conversion  is  slower.  It 
is  a  gradual  process  of  coming  to  feel  that  what 
has  passed  officially  as  true,  right,  and  worshipful 
is  so  implicated  in  work  manifestly  dirty,  and 
so  easily  made  to  serve  the  ends  of  the  greedy, 
lazy,  and  cruel,  that  faith  in  its  authenticity  has 
to  be  given  up  as  not  to  be  squared  with  the  facts 
of  the  world.  From  feeling  this  it  is  not  a  long 
step  to  the  further  surmise  that  the  grand  tradi- 
tional foe  of  that  old  moral  order  of  the  world, 
now  so  severely  discredited,  may  be  less  black  than 
so  lying  an  artist  has  painted  him.  Does  he 
not,  anyhow,  stand  at  the  opposite  pole  to  that 
which  has  just  proved  itself  base?  He,  too,  per- 
haps, is  some  helpless  butt  of  the  slings  and  ar- 
rows of  an  enthroned  barbarity  tormenting  the 
world.  The  legend  about  his  condign  fall  from 
heaven  may  only  be  some  propagandist  lie — all 
we  are  suffered  to  hear  about  some  early  crime 
in  the  long,  beastly  annals  of  governmental  mis- 
doing. So  thought  trips,  fairly  lightly,  along  till 
your  worthy  Bohemian  peasant,  literal,  serious, 
and  straight,  like  the  plain  working-man  of  all 
countrysides,  turns,  with  a  desperate  logical  in- 
tegrity and  courage,  right  away  from  a  world 
order  which  has  called  itself  divine  and  shown 
itself  diabolic.     He  will  embrace,  in  its  stead,  the 

233 


DISENCHANTMENT 

only  other  world  order  supposed  to  be  extant: 
the  one  which  the  former  order  called  diabolic; 
at  any  rate,  he  has  not  wittingly  suffered  any  such 
wrong  at  its  hand  as  the  scourges  of  Popes  and  of 
Emperors.    So  the  plain  man  emerges  a  Satanist. 

II 

To-day  the  convert  does  not  insist  upon  bear- 
ing the  new  name.  He  does  not,  except  in  the 
case  of  a  few  doctrinaire  bigots,  repeat  any  Satan- 
ist creed.  But  in  several  portions  of  Europe  the 
war  made  conversions  abound.  Imagine  the  state 
of  mind  that  it  must  have  induced  in  many  a 
plain  Russian  peasant,  literal,  serious,  and 
straight,  like  the  Bohemian.  First  the  Tsar,  in 
the  name  of  God  and  of  Holy  Russia,  sent  him, 
perhaps  without  so  much  as  a  rifle,  to  starve  and 
be  shelled  in  a  trench.  If  he  escaped,  the  Soviet 
chiefs,  in  the  name  of  Justice,  sent  him  to  fight 
against  those  for  whom  the  Tsar  had  made  him 
fight  before,  while  his  wife  and  babies  were 
starved  by  those  whom  he  fought  both  for  and 
against.  When  his  fighting  was  done  he  was 
made,  in  the  name  of  social  right,  an  industrial 
conscript  or  wage-slave.  If  alive,  to-day,  he  is 
probably  overworked  and  starved,  perhaps  far 
from  home,  his  family  life  broken  up,  his  instinct 

234 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

or  right  of  self-direction  ignored  or  punished 
as  treason  by  rulers  whom  he  did  not  choose,  his 
whole  country  in  danger  of  lapsing  into  the  abject 
miseries  of  an  uncared-for  fowl-run — all  brought 
about  in  the  name  of  human  freedom. 

Consider,  again,  the  case  of  some  German  or 
Austrian  widow  with  many  young  children.  The 
Kaiser's  Government,  breathing  the  most  Christ- 
ian sentiments,  gave  the  Fatherland  war  in  her 
time;  her  husband  was  killed,  her  country  is 
ruined,  her  children  are  growing  up  stunted  and 
marred  by  all  the  years  of  semi-starvation;  the 
Paris  Press  is  crying  out,  in  the  name  of  moral 
order  throughout  the  world,  that  they  ought  to 
be  starved  more  drastically;  part  of  the  English 
Press  complains,  in  the  tone  of  an  outraged 
spiritual  director,  that  she  has  shown  no  adequate 
signs  of  repentance  of  the  Kaiser's  sins,  and  that 
she  and  hers  are  living  like  fighting  cocks;  the 
German  Agrarian  Party,  in  the  name  of  Patriot- 
ism, manoeuvres  to  keep  her  from  getting  her 
weekly  ounce  or  two  of  butcher's  meat  from 
abroad  more  cheaply  than  they  would  like  to  sell 
it  to  her  at  home. 

What  could  you  say  to  such  people  if  they 
should  break  out  at  last  in  despair  and  defiance: 
"  Anyhow,    all   these   people,   here   and   abroad, 

235 


DISENCHANTMENT 

who  take  upon  themselves  to  speak  for  God  and 
duty  and  patriotism  and  liberty  and  loyalty  are 
evil  people,  and  do  evil  things.  Shall  not  all  these 
trees  that  they  swear  by  be  judged  by  their 
fruits?  Away  with  them  into  the  fire,  God  and 
country  and  social  duty  and  justice  and  every 
old  phrase  that  used  to  seem  more  than 
a  phrase  till  the  war  came  to  show  it  up  for  what 
it  was  worth  as  a  means  to  right  conduct  in  men?  " 
Of  course  you  could  say  a  great  deal.  But  at 
every  third  word  they  could  incommode  you  with 
some  stumping  case  of  the  foulest  thing  done  in 
the  holiest  name  till  you  would  be  shamed  into 
silence  at  the  sight  of  all  the  crowns  of  thorns 
brought  to  market  by  keepers  of  what  you  still 
believe  to  be  vineyards.  So,  throughout  much  of 
Europe,  Satan's  most  promising  innings  for  many 
long  years  has  begun. 

Ill 

In  their  vices  as  well  as  their  virtues  the  Eng- 
lish preserve  a  distinguished  moderation.  They 
do  not  utterly  shrink  from  jobbery,  for  example; 
they  do  from  a  job  that  is  flagrant  or  gross.  They 
give  judgeships  as  prizes  for  party  support,  but 
not  to  the  utterly  briefless,  the  dullard  who  knows 
no  more  law  than  necessity.    Building  contractors, 

236 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

when  In  the  course  of  their  rise  they  become  town 
councillors,  do  not  give  bribes  right  and  left: 
their  businesses  thrive  without  that.  An  Irishman 
running  a  Tammany  in  the  States  cannot  thus  hold 
himself  in:  the  humorous  side  of  corruption 
charms  him  too  much :  he  wants  to  let  the  grand 
farce  of  roguery  rip  for  all  it  is  worth.  But 
the  English  private's  pet  dictum,  "  There's  rea- 
son In  everything,"  rules  the  jobber,  the  profiteer, 
the  shirker  and  placeman  of  Albion  as  firmly  as 
it  controls  the  imagination  of  her  Wordsworths 
and  the  political  idealism  of  her  Cromwells  and 
Pitts.  Like  her  native  cockroaches  and  bugs, 
whose  moderate  stature  excites  the  admiration  and 
envy  of  human  dwellers  among  the  corresponding 
fauna  of  the  tropics,  the  caterpillars  of  her  com- 
monwealth preserve  the  golden  mean;  few,  in- 
deed, are  flamboyants  or  megalomaniacs. 

So,  when  the  war  with  its  great  opportunities 
came  we  were  but  temperately  robbed  by  our  own 
birds  of  prey.  Makers  of  munitions  made  mighty 
fortunes  out  of  our  peril.  Still,  every  British 
soldier  did  have  a  rifle,  at  any  rate  when  he  went 
to  the  front.  I  have  watched  a  twelve-inch  gun 
fire.  In  action,  fifteen  of  Its  great  bales  or  barrels 
of  high  explosives,  fifteen  running,  and  only  three 
of  the  fifteen  costly  packages  failed  to  explode 

237 


DISENCHANTMENT 

duly  on  its  arrival  beyond.  Vendors  of  soldiers' 
clothes  and  boots  acquired  from  us  the  wealth 
which  dazzles  us  all  in  these  days  of  our  own 
poverty.  They  knew  how  to  charge :  they  made 
hay  with  a  will  while  the  blessed  suns  of  19 14-18 
were  high  in  the  heavens.  Still,  nearly  all  the 
tunics  made  in  that  day  of  temptation  did  hold 
together;  none  of  the  boots,  so  far  as  I  knew  or 
heard  tell,  was  made  of  brown  paper.  "  He  that 
maketh  haste  to  be  rich  shall  not  be  innocent." 
Still,  there  is  reason  in  everything.  "  Meden 
agan,"  as  the  Greeks  said — temperance  in  all 
things,  even  in  robbery,  even  in  patriotism  and 
personal  honour.  Our  profiteers  did  not  bid  Satan 
get  him  behind  them;  but  they  did  ask  him  to 
stand  a  little  to  one  side. 

So,  too,  in  the  army.  Some  old  Regular  ser- 
geant-majors would  sell  every  stripe  that  they 
could,  but  they  would  not  sell  a  map  to  the  enemy. 
Some  of  our  higher  commanders  would  use  their 
A.D.C.  rooms  as  funk-holes  to  shelter  the  healthy 
young  nephew  or  son  of  their  good  friend  the  earl, 
or  their  distant  cousin  the  marquis.  But  there 
were  others.  Sometimes  a  part  of  our  Staff 
would  almost  seem  to  forget  the  war,  and  give 
its  undivided  mind  to  major  struggles — its  own 
intestine    "  strafes  "    and    the    more    bitter   war 

238 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

against  uncomplaisant  politicians  at  home.  But 
presently  it  would  remember,  and  work  with  a 
will.  There  was,  again,  an  undeniable  impulse 
abroad,  among  the  "  best  people "  of  the  old 
Army,  to  fall  back  towards  G.H.Q.  and  its  safety 
as  soon  as  the  first  few  months  made  it  clear  that 
this  was  to  be  none  of  our  old  gymkhana  wars, 
but  almost  certainly  lethal  to  regimental  officers 
who  stayed  it  out  with  their  units.  But  this  cen- 
tripetal instinct,  this  "  safety  first  "  movement, 
though  real,  was  moderate.  Lists  of  headquarter 
formations  might  show  an  appreciable  excess  of 
names  of  some  social  distinction.  But  not  an 
outrageous  excess.  Some  peers  and  old  baronets 
and  their  sons  were  still  getting  killed,  by  their 
own  choice,  along  with  the  plebs  to  the  very  end 
of  the  war.  Again,  all  through  the  war  one  could 
not  deny  that  those  who  had  chosen  the  safer 
part,  or  had  it  imposed  upon  them,  absorbed  a 
stout  and  peckish  lion's  share  of  the  rewards  for 
martial  valour.  And  yet  they  did  not  absolutely 
withhold  these  meeds  from  officers  and  men  who 
fought.  The  king  of  beasts  being  duly  served, 
these  hard-bitten  jackals  got  some  share,  though 
not  perhaps,  for  their  numbers,  a  copious  one. 
Some  well-placed  shirkers  were  filled  with  good 
things,  but  the  brave  were  not  sent  utterly  empty 

239 


DISENCHANTMENT 

away.  Guardsmen  and  cavalrymen,  the  least 
richly  brained  soldiers  we  had,  kept  to  themselves 
the  bulk  of  the  distinguished  jobs  for  which  brain- 
work  was  needed;  and  yet  the  poor  foot-soldier 
was  not  expressly  taboo;  quite  a  good  billet  would 
fall  to  him  sometimes — Plumer  commanded  an 
army. 

As  with  the  moral  virtues,  so  with  the  mental. 
Brilliancy,  genius,  scientific  imagination  in  any 
higher  command  would  have  caused  almost  a 
shock;  a  general  with  the  demonic  insight  to  see 
that  he  had  got  the  enemy  stiff  at  Arras  in  19 17 
and  at  Cambrai  the  same  autumn,  might  have 
seemed  an  outre  highbrow,  almost  unsafe.  And 
yet  the  utter  slacker  was  not  countenanced,  and 
the  dunce  had  been  known  to  be  so  dull  that  he 
was  sent  home  as  an  empty  by  those  unexacting 
chiefs.  There  was  reason  in  everything,  even  in 
reason. 

IV 

All  this  relative  mildness  in  the  irritants  ad- 
ministered to  the  common  Englishman  as  soldier 
had  its  counterpart  in  the  men's  ingrained  moder- 
ateness of  reaction.  At  Bray-sur-Somme  during 
the  battle  of  191 6  I  saw  a  I'Vench  soldier  go  so 
mad  with  rage  at  what  he  considered  to  be  the 

240 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

deficiencies  of  his  leaders  that  he  brought  out 
each  article  of  his  kit  and  equipment  in  succession 
to  the  door  of  his  billet  and  threw  it  into  the 
deep  central  mud  of  the  road  with  a  separate 
curse,  at  each  cast,  on  war,  patriotism,  civiliza- 
tion, and  the  Commander-in-Chief.  This  Atha- 
nasian  service  of  commination  endured  for  a  full 
quarter  of  an  hour.  But  from  an  English  private 
who  witnessed  the  rite  it  only  drew  the  phlegmatic 
diagnosis:  "He'll  'ave  'ad  a  drop  o'  sugar-water 
an'  got  excited."  Firewater  itself  could  not  ex- 
cite the  English  soldier  to  so  rounded  an  eloquence 
or  to  so  sweeping  a  series  of  judgements.  He 
never  thought  of  throwing  his  messing-tin  and  his 
paybook  into  the  mud;  still  less  of  forming  a 
Council  of  Soldiers  and  Workmen.  Either  step 
would  have  been  of  the  abhorred  nature  of  a 
"  scene." 

Unaggressive,  unoriginal,  anti-extreme,  con- 
temptuous of  all  "  hot  air  "  and  windy  ideas,  he 
too  was  braked  by  the  same  internal  negations 
that  helped  to  keep  his  irredeemably  middling 
commanders  equidistant  from  genius  and  from  ar- 
rant failure.  Confronted  now  with  the  frustra- 
tion of  so  many  too-high  hopes,  the  discrediting 
of  so  many  persons  or  institutions  hitherto  taken 
on  trust,  he  did  not  say,  as  the  humbler  sort  of 
*  241 


DISENCHANTMENT 

Bolshevist  seems  to  have  said  in  his  heart:  "What 
order,  or  disorder,  could  ever  be  worse  than  this 
which  has  failed?  Why  not  anything,  any  wild- 
seeming  nihilism  or  fantasy  of  savage  rudeness, 
rather  than  sit  quiet  under  this  old  contemptible 
rule?  "  Instead  of  contracting  a  violent  new 
sort  of  heat  he  simply  went  cold,  and  has  remained 
so.  Where  a  Slav  or  a  Latin  might  have  become 
a  hundred  per  cent.  Satanist  he  became  about  a 
thirty  per  center.  The  disbelief,  the  suspicion, 
the  vacuous  space  in  the  disendowed  heart,  the 
spiritual  rubbish-heap  of  draggled  banners  and 
burst  drums — all  that  blank,  unlighting  and  un- 
warming  part  of  Satanism  was  his,  without  any 
other:  a  Lucifer  cold  as  a  moon  prompted  him 
listlessly,  not  to  passionate  efforts  of  crime,  but 
to  self-regarding  and  indolent  apathy. 

From  the  day  he  went  into  the  army  till  now 
he  has  been  learning  to  take  many  things  less  seri- 
ously than  he  did.  First  what  Burke  calls  the 
pomps  and  plausibilities  of  the  world.  He  has 
tumbled  many  kings  into  the  dust  and  proved  the 
strongest  emperor  assailable.  I  remember  a  little 
private,  who  seemed  to  know  Dickens  by  heart, 
applying  to  William  the  Second  in  19 15  the  words 
used  by  the  Game  Chicken  about  Mr.  Dombey — 
"  as  stiff  a  cove  as  ever  he  see,  but  within  the 

242 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

resources  of  science  to  double  him  up  with  one 
blow  in  the  waistcoat."  This  he  proved,  too, 
he  and  his  like,  casting  down  the  proud  from  their 
seats  with  little  help  from  all  that  was  highly 
placed  and  reverently  regarded  in  his  own  coun- 
try. Our  ruling  class  had,  on  the  whole,  failed, 
and  had  to  be  pulled  through  by  him  and  the 
French  and  Americans;  that  feeling,  in  one  form 
or  another,  is  clear  in  the  common  man's  mind. 
He  may  not  know  in  detail  the  record  of 
French  as  commander-in-chief,  nor  the  exact  state 
of  the  Admiralty  which  let  the  Goeben  and  the 
Breslau  go  free,  nor  the  inner  side  of  the  diplo- 
macy which  added  Turkey,  and  even  Bulgaria,  to 
our  enemies,  nor  yet  the  well-born  underworld  of 
war-time  luxury,  disloyalty,  and  intrigue  which 
notorious  memoirs  have  since  revealed.  But 
some  horse  instinct  or  some  pricking  in  his  thumbs 
told  him  correctly  that  in  every  public  service 
manned  mainly  by  our  upper  classes  the  war-time 
achievement  was  relatively  low.  There  is  very 
little  natural  inclination  to  class  jealousy  among 
plain  EngHshmen.  Equalitarian  theory  does  not 
interest  them  much.  Their  general  relish  for  a 
gamble  makes  them  rather  like  a  lucky-bag  or 
bran-tub  society  in  which  anyone  may  pick  up,  with 
luck,  a  huge  unearned  prize.     By  cheerfully  help- 

243 


DISENCHANTMENT 

ing  to  keep  up  the  big  gaming-hell,  by  giving 
Barnatos  and  Joels  pretty  full  value  for  their  win, 
the  pre-war  governing  class  gained  a  kind  of 
strength  which  a  prouder  and  more  fastidious 
aristocracy  would  have  forgone.  It  stands  in 
little  physical  danger  now.  But  it  lives,  since  the 
war,  in  a  kind  of  contempt.  The  one  good  word 
that  the  average  private  had  for  bestowal  among 
his  unseen  "  betters  "  during  the  latter  years  of 
the  war  was  for  the  King.  "  He  did  give  up  his 
beer  "  was  said  a  thousand  times  by  men  whom 
that  symbolic  act  of  willing  comradeship  with 
the  dry  throat  on  the  march  and  the  war-pinched 
household  at  home  had  touched  and  astonished. 

Other  institutions,  too,  had  been  weighed  in 
the  balance.  The  War  Office  was  only  the  com- 
monest of  many  by-words.  The  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment, in  which  too  many  men  of  military  age 
had  demanded  the  forced  enlistment  of  others, 
wore  an  air  of  insincerity,  apart  from  the  loss 
of  prestige  inevitable  in  a  war;  for  armies  always 
take  the  colour  out  of  deliberative  assemblies. 
To  moderate  this  effect  a  large  number  of  mem- 
bers who  did  not  go  to  the  war  found  means  to 
wear  khaki  in  London  instead  of  black,  but  this 
well-conceived  precaution  only  succeeded  in  fur- 
ther  curling    the    lip    of    derision    among   actual 

244 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

soldiers.  The  churches,  as  we  have  seen,  got  their 
chance,  made  little  or  nothing  of  it,  and  came  out 
of  the  war  quite  good  secular  friends  with  the 
men,  but  almost  null  and  void  in  their  eyes  as 
ghostly  counsellors,  and  stripped  of  the  vague  con- 
sequence with  which  many  men  had  hitherto  cred- 
ited them  on  account  of  any  divine  mission  they 
might  be  found  to  have  upon  closer  acquaint- 
ance. Respect  for  the  truthfulness  of  the  Press 
was  clean  gone.  The  contrast  between  the  daily 
events  that  men  saw  and  the  daily  accounts  that 
were  printed  was  final.  What  the  Press  said 
thenceforth  was  not  evidence.  But  still  it  had 
sent  out  plum  puddings  at  Christmas. 

Neither  was  anything  evidence  now  that  was 
said  by  a  politician.  A  great  many  plain  men  had 
really  drawn  a  distinction,  all  their  lives,  between 
the  solemn  public  assurances  of  statesmen  and  the 
solemn  public  assurances  of  men  who  draw 
teeth  outside  dock-gates  and  take  off  their  caps 
and  call  upon  God  to  blast  the  health  of  their 
own  darling  children  if  a  certain  pill  they  have  for 
sale  does  not  cure  colds,  measles,  ring-worm,  and 
the  gripes  within  twenty-four  hours  of  taking.  A 
Swift  might  say  there  never  was  any  difference, 
but  the  plain  man  had  always  firmly  believed  that 
there  was.     Now,   after  the  war,   he  is  shaken. 

245 


DISENCHANTMENT 

Every  disease  which  victory  was  to  cure  he  sees 
raging  worse  than  before:  more  poverty,  less 
liberty,  more  likelihood  of  other  wars,  more  spite 
between  master  and  man,  less  national  comrade- 
ship. And  then  the  crucial  test  case,  the  solemn 
vow  of  the  statesmen,  all  with  their  hands  on  their 
sleek  bosoms,  that  if  only  the  common  man  would 
save  them  just  that  once  they  would  turn  to  and 
think  of  nothing  else,  do  nothing  else,  but  build 
him  a  house,  assure  him  of  work,  settle  him  on 
land,  make  all  England  a  paradise  for  him — a 
"  land  fit  for  heroes  to  live  in."  And  then  the 
sequel :  the  cold  fit;  the  feint  at  house-building  and 
its  abandonment;  all  the  bankruptcy  of  promise; 
the  ultimate  bilking,  done  by  way  of  reluctant  sur- 
render to  "  anti-waste  "  stunts  got  up  by  the  same 
cheap-jacks  of  the  Press  who  in  the  first  year 
of  the  war  would  have  had  the  statesmen  promise 
yet  more  wildly  than  they  did.  Colds,  measles, 
ring-worm,  and  gripes  all  flourishing,  much  more 
than  twenty-four  hours  after,  and  new  ailments 
added  unto  them. 

No  relief,  either,  by  running  from  one  medi- 
cine-man to  the  next.  Few  of  our  disenchanted 
men  doubt  that  the  lightning  cure  of  the  Commu- 
nist is  only  just  another  version  of  the  lightning 
cure    of    the   Tory,    the    authoritarian,   the    per- 

246 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

emptory  regimentalist.  "  Give  me  a  free 
hand  and  all  will  be  well  with  you."  Both 
say  exactly  the  same  thing  in  the  end. 
One  of  them  may  call  it  the  rule  of  the  fittest, 
the  other  the  rule  of  the  proletariat;  each  means 
exactly  the  same  thing — the  rule  of  himself,  the 
enforcement  on  everyone  else  of  his  own  darling 
theory  of  what  is  best  for  them,  whether  they 
know  it  or  not.  Small  choice  in  rotten  apples; 
one  bellyful  of  east  wind  is  a  diet  as  poor  as  an- 
other. Not  in  the  yells  and  counter-yells  of  this 
and  that  vendor  of  patent  hot-air  is  the  heart 
of  the  average  ex-soldier  engaged.  Rather 
"  Away  with  all  gas-projectors  alike  "  is  his  pres- 
ent feeling  towards  eloquent  men,  Left  or  Right. 
For  the  moment  he  knows  them  too  well,  and  is 
tired  of  hearing  of  plans  which  might  work  if 
he  were  either  a  babe  in  arms  or  a  Michael  of 
super-angelic  wisdom  and  power. 

y 

You  maybe  disillusioned  about  the  value  of 
things,  or  about  their  security,  either  coming  to 
feel  that  your  house  is  a  poor  place  to  live  in  or 
that,  pleasant  or  not,  it  is  likely  enough  to  come 
down  on  your  head.  Of  these  two  forms  of  dis- 
comfort our  friend  experiences  both.     Much  that 

247 


DISENCHANTMENT 

he  took  to  be  fairly  noble  now  looks  pretty  mean; 
and  much  that  seemed  reassuringly  stable  is  seen 
to  be  shaky.  Civilization  itself,  the  at  any  rate 
habitable  dwelling  which  was  to  be  shored  up  by 
the  war,  wears  a  strange  new  air  of  precarious- 
ness. 

Even  before  the  war  a  series  of  melancholy 
public  mis-adventures  had  gone  some  way  to 
awake  the  disquieting  notion  that  civilization,  the 
whole  ordered,  fruitful  joint  action  of  a  nation, 
a  continent,  or  the  whole  world,  was  only  a  bluff. 
When  the  world  is  at  peace  and  fares  well,  the 
party  of  order  and  decency,  justice  and  mercy  and 
self-control,  is  really  bluffing  a  much  larger  party 
of  egoism  and  greed  that  would  bully  and  grab 
if  it  dared.  The  deep  anti-social  offence  of  the 
"  suffragettes,"  with  their  hatchets  and  hunger- 
strikes,  was  that  they  gave  away,  in  some  measure, 
the  bluff  by  which  non-criminal  people  had  hither- 
to kept  some  control  over  reluctant  assentors  to 
the  rule  of  mutual  protection  and  forbearance. 
They  helped  the  baser  sort  to  see  that  the  bluff 
of  civilization  is  at  the  mercy  of  anyone  ready  to 
run  a  little  bodily  risk  in  calling  it.  Sir  Edward 
Carson  took  up  the  work.  He  "  called  "  the  bluff 
of  the  Pax  Britannica,  the  presumption  that 
armed  treason  to  the  law  and  order  of  the  British 

248 


OUR    MODERATE    SATANISTS 

Empire  must  lead  to  the  discomfiture  of  the 
traitor,  whoever  he  was;  he  presented  Sinn  Fein 
and  every  other  would-be  insurgent  with  proof 
that  treason  may  securely  do  much  more  than 
peep  at  what  it  would;  British  subjects,  he  showed, 
might  quite  well  conspire  for  armed  revolt  against 
the  King's  peace  and  not  be  any  losers,  in  their 
own  persons,' by  doing  it. 

The  greatest  of  all  bluffs,  the  general  peace 
of  the  world  and  the  joint  civilization  of  Europe, 
remained  uncalled  for  a  year  or  two  more.  It  was 
a  high  moral  bluff.  People  were  everywhere  say- 
ing that  world-war  was  too  appalling,  too  frantic- 
ally wicked  a  thing  for  any  government  to  invite 
or  procure.  Peace,  they  argued,  held  a  hand  irre- 
sistibly strong.  Had  she  not,  among  her  cards, 
every  acknowledged  precept  of  Christianity  and 
of  morality,  even  of  wisdom  for  a  man's  self  or 
a  nation's?  Potsdam  called  the  world's  bluff, 
and  the  world's  hand  was  found  to  be  empty. 
Potsdam  lost  the  game  in  the  end,  but  it  had  not 
called  wholly  in  vain.  To  a  Europe  exhausted, 
divided,  and  degraded  by  five  years  of  return  to 
the  morals  of  the  Stone  Age  it  had  suggested  how 
many  things  are  as  they  are,  how  many  things 
are  owned  as  they  are,  how  many  lives  are  safely 
continued,  merely  because  our  birds  of  prey  have 

249 


DISENCHANTMENT 

not  yet  had  the  wit  to  see  what  would  come  of 
a  sudden  snatch  made  with  a  will  and  with  as- 
surance. The  total  number  of  policemen  on  a 
race-course  is  always  a  minute  percentage  of  the 
total  number  of  its  thieves  and  roughs.  The  bad 
men  are  not  held  down  by  force;  they  are  only 
bluffed  by  the  pretence  of  it.  They  have  got  the 
tip  now,  and  the  plain  man  is  dimly  aware  how 
surprisingly  little  there  is  to  keep  us  all  from 
slipping  back  into  the  state  we  were  in  when  a 
man  would  kill  another  to  steal  a  piece  of  food 
that  he  had  got,  and  when  a  young  woman  was 
not  safe  on  a  road  out  of  sight  of  her  friends. 

The  plain  man,  so  far  as  I  know  him,  is  neither 
aghast  nor  gleeful  at  this  revelation.  For  the 
most  part  he  looks  somewhat  listlessly  on,  as  at 
a  probable  dog-fight  in  which  there  is  no  dog  of 
his.  A  sense  of  moral  horror  does  not  come 
easily  when  you  have  supped  full  of  horrors  on 
most  of  the  days  of  three  or  four  years;  sacrilege 
has  to  go  far,  indeed,  to  shock  men  who  have  seen 
their  old  gods  looking  extremely  human  and  blow- 
ing out,  one  by  one,  the  candles  before  their  own 
shrines.  Some  new  god,  or  devil,  of  course,  may 
enter  at  any  time  into  this  disfurnished  soul. 
Genius  in  some  leader  might  either  possess  it  with 
an  anarchic  passion  to  smash  and  delete  all  the 

250 


OUR     MODERATE     SATANISTS 

old  institutions  that  disappointed  in  the  day  of 
trial  or  fire  it  with  a  new  craving  to  lift  itself 
clear  of  the  wrack  and  possess  itself  on  the 
heights.  For  either  a  Lenin  or  a  St.  Francis 
there  is  a  wide  field  to  till,  cleared,  but  of  pretty 
stiff  clay.  Persistently  sane  in  his  disenchantment 
as  he  had  been  in  his  rapture,  the  common  man, 
whose  affection  and  trust  the  old  order  wore  out 
in  the  war,  is  still  slow  to  enlist  out-and-out  in  any 
Satanist  unit.  There's  reason,  he  still  feels,  in 
everything.  So  he  remains,  for  the  time,  like 
one  of  the  angels  whom  the  Renaissance  poet 
represented  as  reincarnate  in  man;  the  ones  who 
in  the  insurrection  of  Lucifer  were  not  for 
Jehovah  nor  yet  for  his  enemy. 


251 


CHAPTER     XV 

ANY    CURE  ? 

I 

HOW  shall  it  all  be  set  right?  For  it 
must  be,  of  course.  A  people  that  did 
not  wait  to  be  pushed  off  its  seat  by  the 
Kaiser  is  not  likely  now  to  turn  its  face  to  the 
wall  and  die  inertly  of  shortage  of  faith  and  gen- 
eral moral  debility.  Some  day  soon  we  shall  have 
to  cease  squatting  among  the  potsherds  and  crab- 
bing each  other,  and  give  all  the  strength  we  have 
left  to  the  job  of  regaining  the  old  control  of  our- 
selves and  our  fate  which,  in  the  days  of  our 
health,  could  only  be  kept  by  putting  forth  con- 
stantly the  whole  force  of  the  will.  "  Not  to 
be  done,"  you  may  say.  And,  of  course,  it  will 
be  a  miracle.  But  only  the  everyday  miracle 
done  in  somebody's  body,  or  else  in  his  soul. 
When  the  skin  shines  white  and  tight  over  the 
joints,  and  the  face  is  only  a  skull  with  some 
varieties  of  expression,  and  the  very  flame  flickers 
and  jumps  in  the  lamp,  the  body  will  bend  itself 
up  to  expel  a  disease  that  it  could  not,  in  all  its 
first  splendour  of  health,  keep  from  the  door.  In 
all  the  breeds  of  cowardly  livers — drunkards, 
thieves,  liars,  sorners,  drug-takers,  all  the  kinds 
that  have  run   from  the  enemy,   throwing  away 

252 


ANY    CURE? 

as  they  ran  every  weapon  that  better  men  use  to 
repel  him — you  will  find  some  that  turn  in  the 
end  and  rend  with  their  bare  hands  the  fiend  that 
they  could  not  face  with  their  bow  and  their  spear. 
But  these  recoveries  only  come  upon  terms : 
no  going  back  to  heaven  except  through  a  cer- 
tain purgatorial  passage.  There,  while  it  lasts, 
the  invalid  must  not  expect  to  enjoy  either  the 
heady  visions  of  the  fever  that  is  now  taking  its 
leave  or  the  more  temperate  beatitude  of  the 
health  that  may  presently  come.  He  lies  re- 
duced to  animal,  almost  vegetable,  matter,  quite 
joyless  and  unthrilled,  and  has  to  abide  in  numb 
passivity,  like  an  unborn  child's,  whatever  may 
come  of  the  million  minute  molecular  changes  go- 
ing on  unseen  in  the  enigmatic  darkness  of  his 
tissues,  where  tiny  cell  is  adding  itself  to  tiny 
cell  to  build  he  knows  not  what.  And  then  some 
day  the  real  thing,  the  second  birth  as  wonderful 
as  the  first,  comes  of  itself  and  the  stars  are  sing- 
ing together  all  right  and  the  sons  of  God  shout- 
ing for  joy.  The  same  way  with  the  spirit,  ex- 
cept that  the  body  faints,  and  so  is  eased,  at  some 
point  in  any  rising  scale  of  torment:  the  spirit  has 
to  go  on  through  the  mill  without  such  anaesthe- 
tics as  fainting.  So  the  man  who  has  gone  far 
off  the  rails  in  matters  of  conduct,  and  tries  to 

253 


DISENCHANTMENT 

get  back  to  them,  has  such  hells  of  patience  to 
live  through,  and  out  of,  as  no  liquid  fire  known 
to  the  war  chemists  could  make  for  the  flesh.  To 
possess  your  soul  in  patience,  with  all  the  skin 
and  some  of  the  flesh  burnt  off  your  face  and 
hands,  is  a  job  for  a  boy  compared  with  the  pains 
of  a  man  who  has  lived  pretty  long  in  the  exhilar- 
ating world  that  drugs  or  strong  waters  seem  to 
create  and  is  trying  to  Hve  now  in  the  first  bald 
desolation  created  by  knocking  them  off,  the  time 
in  which 

The  dulled  heart  feels 
That  somewhere,  sealed  with  hopeless  seals, 
The  unmeaning  heaven  about  him  reels, 

And  he  lies  hurled 
Beyond  the  roar  of  all  the  wheels 

Of  all  the  world. 

And  yet  no  other  way  out.  Disease  and  imbecility 
and  an  early  and  ignoble  death,  or  else  that  stoic 
facing,  through  interminable  days,  of  an  easily 
escapable  dulness  that  may  be  anything  from  an 
ache  up  to  an  agony. 

II 

That  is  about  where  we  stand  as  a  nation.  Of 
course,  a  few  fortunates  mailed  in  a  happy,  inde- 
feasible genius  of  wonder  and  delight  at  every- 

254 


ANY    CURE? 

thing  round  them  are  all  right.  And  so  are  a 
few  clods  of  whole-hog  insensibility.  Most  of 
us,  on  the  whole,  find  that  effort  is  less  fun  than 
it  was,  and  many  things  somewhat  dull  that  used 
to  sparkle  with  interest;  the  salt  has  lost,  not 
all,  but  some  of  its  savour;  the  grasshopper  is 
a  bit  of  a  burden;  old  hobbies  of  politics,  social 
causes,  liberal  comradeships,  the  loves  and  wars 
of  letters  and  art,  which  used  to  excite,  look  at 
times  as  if  they  might  only  have  been,  at  the 
best,  rather  a  much  ado  about  nothing;  buzzing 
about  our  heads  there  come  importunate  suspi- 
cions that  much  of  what  we  used  to  do  so  keenly 
was  hardly  worth  doing,  and  that  the  dim,  far 
goals  we  used  to  struggle  towards  were  only  pos- 
sibly worth  trying  for  and  are,  anyhow,  out  of 
reach  now.  That  is  the  somewhat  sick  spirit's 
condition.  The  limp  apathy  that  we  see  at  elec- 
tions, the  curious  indifference  in  presence  of  pub- 
lic wrongs  and  horrors,  the  epidemic  of  sneak- 
ing pilferage,  the  slackening  of  sexual  self-control 
— all  these  are  symptomatic  like  the  furred 
tongue,  subnormal  heat,  and  muddy  eye. 

Like  the  hard  drinker  next  morning,  we  suffer 
a  touch  of  Hamlet's  complaint,  the  malady  of 
the  dyspeptic  soul,  of  indolent  kings  and  of  pam- 

255 


DISENCHANTMENT 

pered  youth  before  it  has  found  any  man's  work 
to  try  itself  on — 

How  weary,  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable 
To  me  are  all  the  uses  of  the  world ! 

Not  the  despair  of  the  battered,  vanquished,  or 
oppressed,  but  the  moping  of  the  relaxed,  the  sur- 
feited, or  the  morbid.  Glad  as  we  all  were  to  be 
done  with  the  war,  its  ends  left  even  the  strong- 
est of  us  a  little  let  down,  as  the  ends  of  other 
long  and  intense  excitements,  good  or  bad,  do.  As 
Ibsen's  young  woman  out  in  search  of  thrills  would 
have  said,  there  were  harps  in  the  air  during  the 
war.  Many  of  them  were  disagreeable  in  their 
timbre,  but  still  they  were  harps.  Since  the  war 
a  good  many  of  the  weaker  vessels  have  somehow 
failed  to  find  harps  in  the  air,  though  there  are 
really  plenty  of  them  in  full  vibration.  So  they 
have  run  about  looking  for  little  pick-me-ups  and 
nips  of  something  mildly  exciting  to  keep  up  to 
par  their  sagging  sense  of  the  adventuresomeness 
of  life.  Derby  sweeps  never  had  such  a  vogue; 
every  kind  of  gamble  has  boomed;  dealers  in  pub- 
lic entertainment  have  found  that  the  rawest  sen- 
sationalism pays  better  than  ever — anything  that 
will  give  a  fillip,  any  poor  new-whisky  fillip,  to 
jaded  nerves. 

256 


ANY    CURE? 

Ill 

Of  course,  life  itself  is  all  right.  It  never  grows 
dull.  All  dullness  is  in  the  mind;  it  comes  out 
thence  and  diffuses  itself  over  everything  round 
the  dull  person,  and  then  he  terms  everything  dull, 
and  thinks  himself  the  victim  of  the  impact  of  dull 
things.  In  stupid  rich  people,  in  boys  and  girls 
deadeningly  taught  at  dead-alive  schools,  in  all 
disappointed  weaklings  and  in  declining  nations, 
this  loss  of  power  to  shed  anything  but  dullness 
upon  what  one  sees  and  hears  is  common  enough. 
Second-rate  academic  people,  Victorian  official  art, 
the  French  Second  Empire  drama,  late  Latin  lit- 
erature exhibit  its  ravages  well.  In  healthy  chil- 
dren, in  men  and  women  of  high  mental  vitality, 
in  places  where  any  of  the  radio-activity  of  gifted 
teaching  breaks  out  for  a  while,  and  in  swiftly  and 
worthily  rising  nations  the  mind  is  easily  delighted 
and  absorbed  by  almost  any  atom  of  ordinary  ex- 
perience and  Its  relation  to  the  rest.  The  wonder 
and  beauty  and  humour  of  life  go  on  just  the  same 
as  ever  whether  Spain  or  Holland  or  Italy  feel 
them  or  miss  them;  youth  would  somewhere  hear 
the  chimes  at  midnight  with  the  stir  they  made 
in  Shakespeare's  wits  although  all  England  were 
peopled  for  ages  with  dullards  whose  pastors  and 

257 


DISENCHANTMENT 

masters  had  trained  them  to  find  the  divine  Fal- 
staffiad  as  dull  as  a  thaw. 

It  need  not  come  to  that.  Sick  as  we  are,  we 
have  still  in  reserve  the  last  resource  of  the  sick, 
that  saving  miracle  of  recuperative  force  with 
which  I  have  bored  you.  To  let  the  sick  part  of 
our  soul  just  be  still  and  recover;  to  make  our  al- 
coholized tissues  just  do  their  work  long  enough 
on  plain  water — that,  if  we  can  but  do  it,  is  all  the 
sweeping  and  garnishing  needed  to  make  us  pos- 
sible dwelling-places  again  for  the  vitalizing  spirit 
of  sane  delight  in  whatever  adventure  befalls  us. 
How,  then,  to  do  it?  Not,  I  fancy,  by  any  kind 
of  pow-wow  or  palaver  of  congress,  conference, 
general  committee,  sub-committee,  or  other  ex- 
pedient for  talking  in  company  instead  of  working 
alone.  This  is  an  individual's  job,  and  a  some- 
what lonely  one,  though  a  nation  has  to  be  saved 
by  it.  To  get  down  to  work,  whoever  else  idles; 
to  tell  no  lies,  whoever  else  may  thrive  on  their 
uses;  to  keep  fit,  and  the  beast  in  you  down;  to 
help  any  who  need  it;  to  take  less  from  your  world 
than  you  give  it;  to  go  without  the  old  drams  to 
the  nerves — the  hero  stunt,  the  sob  story,  all  the 
darling  liqueurs  of  war  emotionalism,  war  vanity, 
war  spite,  war  rant  and  cant  of  every  kind;  and  to 
do  it  all,  not  in  a  sentimental  mood  of  self-pity 

258 


ANY    CURE? 

like  some  actor  mounting  in  an  empty  theatre  and 
thinking  what  treasures  the  absent  audience  has 
lost,  but  like  a  man  on  a  sheep-farm  in  the  moun- 
tains, as  much  alone  and  at  peace  with  his  work  of 
maintaining  the  world  as  God  was  when  he  made 
it. 

You  remember  the  little  French  towns  which 
the  pestle  and  mortar  of  war  had  so  ground  into 
dust,  red  and  white,  that  each  separate  brick  went 
back  at  last,  dust  to  dust,  to  mix  with  the  earth 
from  which  it  had  come.  The  very  clay  of  them 
has  to  be  put  into  moulds  and  fired  again.  To 
some  such  remaking  of  bricks,  some  shaping  and 
hardening  anew  of  the  most  elementary,  plainest 
units  of  rightness  in  action,  we  have  to  get  back. 
Humdrum  decencies,  patiently  practised  through 
millions  of  undistinguished  lives,  were  the  myriad 
bricks  out  of  which  all  the  advanced  architecture 
of  conduct  was  built — the  solemn  temples  of 
creeds,  gorgeous  palaces  of  romantic  heroism, 
cloud-capped  towers  of  patriotic  exaltation.  And 
now,  just  when  there  seems  to  be  such  a  babble  as 
never  before  about  these  grandiose  structures, 
bricks  have  run  short. 

Something  simple,  minute,  and  obscure,  wholly 
good  and  not  puffed  up  at  all,  something  almost 
atomic — a  grain  of  wheat,  a  thread  of  wool,  a 

259 


DISENCHANTMENT 

crystal  of  clean  salt,  figures  best  the  kind  of  hu- 
man excellence  of  which  our  world  has  now  most 
need.  We  would  seem  to  have  plunged  on  too 
fast  and  too  far,  like  boys  who  have  taken  to 
spouting  six-syllabled  words  until  they  forget 
what  they  had  learnt  of  the  alphabet.  The  moral 
beauty  of  perfect  contrition  is  preached  to  a 
beaten  enemy  by  our  Press  while  the  vitals  of  Eng- 
land are  rotting  with  unprecedented  growths  of 
venereal  disease:  an  England  of  boundlessly  ad- 
vertised heroes  and  saints  has  ousted  the  England 
in  which  you  would  never,  wherever  you  travelled, 
be  given  wrong  change  on  a  bus. 

The  wise  man  saved  his  little  city,  "  yet  no  man 
remembered  that  same  poor  man,"  and  no  one 
had  better  take  to  this  way  of  saving  England  if 
what  he  wants  is  public  distinction.  It  will  be  a 
career  as  undistinguished  as  that  of  one  of  the  ex- 
tra corpuscles  formed  in  the  blood  to  enable  a  low- 
land man  to  live  on  Himalayan  heights.  Our  best 
friends  for  a  long  time  to  come  will  not  be  any 
of  the  standing  cynosures  of  reporters'  eyes;  they 
will  find  a  part  of  their  satisfaction  in  being  no- 
bodies; assured  of  the  truth  of  the  saying  that 
there  is  no  limit  to  what  a  man  can  do  so  long  as 
he  does  not  care  a  straw  who  gets  the  credit  for 
it.     Working   apart   from   the  whole   overblown 

260 


ANY    CURE? 

world  of  war  valuations,  the  scramble  for  hon- 
ours earned  and  unearned,  the  plotting  and  jost- 
ling for  front  places  on  the  stage  and  larger  letters 
on  the  bill,  the  whole  life  that  is  commonly  held 
up  to  admiration  as  great  and  enviable,  they  will 
live  in  a  kind  of  retreat  almost  cloistral;  plenty 
of  work  for  the  faculties,  plenty  of  rest  for  the 
nerves,  control  for  desire  and  atrophy  for  con- 
ceit.   Hard? — yes,  but  England  is  worth  it. 

IV 

Among  the  mind's  powers  is  one  that  comes  of 
itself  to  many  children  and  artists.  It  need  not  be 
lost,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  by  anyone  who  has 
ever  had  it.  This  is  the  power  of  taking  delight 
in  a  thing,  or  rather  in  anything,  everything,  not 
as  a  means  to  some  other  end,  but  just  because 
it  is  what  it  is,  as  the  lover  dotes  on  whatever 
may  be  the  traits  of  the  beloved  object.  A  child 
in  the  full  health  of  his  mind  will  put  his  hand  flat 
on  the  summer  turf,  feel  it,  and  give  a  little  shiver 
of  private  glee  at  the  elastic  firmness  of  the  globe. 
He  is  not  thinking  how  well  it  will  do  for  some 
game  or  to  feed  sheep  upon.  That  would  be  the 
way  of  the  wooer  whose  mind  runs  on  his  mis- 
tress's money.  The  child's  is  sheer  affection,  the 
true  ecstatic  sense  of  the  thing's  inherent  charac- 

261 


DISENCHANTMENT 

teristics.  No  matter  what  the  things  may  be,  no 
matter  what  they  are  good  or  no  good  for,  there 
they  are,  each  with  a  thrilling  unique  look  and  feel 
of  its  own,  like  a  face;  the  iron  astringently  cool 
under  its  paint,  the  painted  wood  familiarly 
warmer,  the  clod  crumbling  enchantingly  down  in 
the  hands,  with  its  little  dry  smell  of  the  sun  and 
of  hot  nettles;  each  common  thing  a  personality 
marked  by  delicious  differences. 

This  joy  of  an  Adam  new  to  the  garden  and  just 
looking  round  is  brought  by  the  normal  child  to 
the  things  that  he  does  as  well  as  those  that  he 
sees.  To  be  suffered  to  do  some  plain  work  with 
the  real  spade  used  by  mankind  can  give  him  a 
mystical  exaltation:  to  come  home  with  his  legs, 
as  the  French  say,  re-entering  his  body  from  the 
fatigue  of  helping  the  gardener  to  weed  beds  sends 
him  to  sleep  in  the  glow  of  a  beatitude  that  is  an 
end  in  itself.  Then  the  paradoxes  of  conduct  be- 
gin to  twinkle  into  sight;  sugar  is  good,  but  there 
is  a  time  to  refrain  from  taking  it  though  you  can; 
a  lie  will  easily  get  you  out  of  a  scrape,  and  yet, 
strangely  and  beautifully,  rapture  possesses  you 
when  you  have  taken  the  scrape  and  left  out  the 
lie.  Divine  unreason,  as  little  scrutable  and  yet 
as  surely  a  friend  as  the  star  that  hangs  a  lamp 
out  from  the  Pole  to  show  you  the  way  across 

262 


ANY    CURE? 

gorse-covered  commons  in  Surrey.  So  he  will  toe 
the  line  of  a  duty,  not  with  a  mere  release  from 
dismay,  but  exultantly,  with  the  fire  and  lifting  of 
heart  of  the  strong  man  and  the  bridegroom,  feel- 
ing always  the  same  secret  and  almost  sensuous 
transport,  while  he  suppresses  a  base  impulse,  that 
he  felt  when  he  pressed  the  warm  turf  with  his 
hand  or  the  crumbling  clay  trickled  warm  between 
his  fingers. 

The  right  education,  if  we  could  find  it,  would 
work  up  this  creative  faculty  of  delight  into  all  its 
branching  possibilities  of  knowledge,  wisdom,  and 
nobility.  Of  all  three  it  is  the  beginning,  condi- 
tion, or  raw  materal.  At  present  it  almost  seems 
to  be  the  aim  of  the  commonplace  teacher  to  take 
it  firmly  away  from  any  pupil  so  blessed  as  to  pos- 
sess it.  How  we  all  know  the  kind  of  public  school 
master  whose  manner  expresses  breezy  comrade- 
ship with  the  boys  in  facing  jointly  the  boredom 
of  admittedly  beastly  but  still  unavoidable  lessons  ! 
And  the  assumption  that  life  out  of  school  is  too 
dull  to  be  faced  without  the  aid  of  infinitely  elab- 
orated games!  And  the  girl  schools  where  it 
seems  to  be  feared  that  evil  must  come  in  any 
space  of  free  time  in  which  neither  a  game  nor  a 
dance  nor  a  concert  nor  a  lecture  with  a  lantern 
intervenes  to  rescue  the  girls  from  the  presumed 

263 


DISENCHANTMENT 

tedium  of  mere  youth  and  health!  Everywhere 
the  assumption  that  simple  things  have  failed;  that 
anything  like  hardy  mental  living  and  looking 
about  for  oneself,  to  find  interests,  is  destined 
to  end  ill;  that  the  only  hope  is  to  keep  up  the 
full  dose  of  drugs,  to  be  always  pulling  and  push- 
ing, prompting  and  coaxing  and  tickling  the  youth- 
ful mind  into  condescending  to  be  interested.  You 
know  the  effects :  the  adolescent  whose  mind  seems 
to  drop  when  taken  out  of  the  school  shafts,  or  at 
least  to  look  round,  utterly  at  a  loss,  with  a  plain- 
tive appeal  for  a  suggestion  of  something  to  do, 
some  excitement  to  come,  something  to  make  it 
worth  while  to  be  alive  on  this  dull  earth.  We 
saw  the  effects  in  our  hapless  brain  work  in  the 
war. 

But  if  we  were  to  wait  to  save  England  till 
thousands  of  men  and  women  brought  up  in  this 
way  see  what  they  have  lost  and  insist  on  a  better 
fate  for  their  children  we  might  as  well  write  Eng- 
land off  as  one  with  Tyre  and  Sidon  already.  Her 
case  is  too  pressing.  She  cannot  wait  for  big, 
slowly  telling  improvements  in  big  institutions,  al- 
though improvements  must  come.  She  has  to  be 
saved  by  a  change  in  the  individual  temper.  We 
each  have  to  fall  back,  with  a  will,  on  the  only 
way  of  life  in  which  the  sane  simplicity  of  joy  in 

264 


ANY    CURE? 

plain  things  and  in  common  Tightness  of  action  can 
be  generated.  Health  of  mind  or  body  comes  of 
doing  wholesome  things — perhaps  for  a  long  time 
without  joy  in  doing  them,  as  the  sick  man  lies 
chafing,  eating  the  slops  that  are  all  he  is  fit  for, 
or  as  the  dipsomaniac  drinks  in  weariness  and  de- 
pression the  insipid  water  that  is  to  save  him. 
Then,  on  some  great  day,  self-control  may  cease  to 
be  merely  the  sum  of  many  dreary  acts  of  absten- 
tion; it  may  take  life  again  as  an  inspiriting  force, 
both  a  warmth  and  a  light,  such  as  makes  nations 
great. 


265 


CHAPTER     XVI 

FAIR   WARNING 


TO  give  the  cure  a  chance  we  must  have  a 
long  quiet  time.  And  we  must  secure  it 
now. 
For  the  moment,  no  doubt,  war  has  gone  out 
of  fashion;  it  pines  in  the  shade,  hke  the  old 
horsehair  covers  for  sofas,  or  antimacassars  of 
lace.  Hardly  a  day  can  pass,  even  now,  but  some- 
one finds  out,  with  a  start  and  a  look  of  displeas- 
ure, that  war  has  been  given  its  chance  and  has 
not  done  quite  so  well  as  it  ought  to  have  done. 
One  man  will  write  to  the  Press,  in  dismay,  that 
the  meals  in  the  Simplon  express  are  not  what  they 
were  in  19  lo.  Another,  outward  bound  by  Calais 
to  Cannes,  has  found  that  the  hot-water  plant  in 
his  sleeping-compartment  struck  work — and  that 
in  a  specially  cold  sector  down  by  the  Alps.  Thus 
does  war  in  the  end,  knock  at  the  doors  of  us  all: 
like  the  roll  of  the  earth  upon  its  axis,  it  brings 
us,  if  not  death  or  destitution  or  some  ashy  taste 
in  the  mouth,  at  any  rate  a  sense  of  a  fallen  tem- 
perature in  our  bunks.  However  non-porous  our 
minds,  there  does  slowly  filter  into  us  the  thought 
that  when  a  million  of  a  country's  men  of  work- 
ing age  have  just  been  killed  there  may  be  a  pla- 

266 


FAIR    WARNING 

guey  dearth  of  the  man-power  needed  to  keep  in 
pleasant  order  the  lavatories  of  its  trains  de  luxe. 
Sad  to  think  how  many  tender  minds,  formed  in 
those  Elysian  years — Elysian  for  anyone  who  was 
not  poor — before  the  war,  will  have  to  suffer, 
probably  for  many  years,  these  little  shocks  of 
realization. 

Surely  there  never  was  any  time  in  the  life  of 
the  world  when  it  was  so  good,  in  the  way  of  ob- 
vious material  comfort,  to  be  alive  and  fairly 
well-to-do  as  it  was  before  the  war.  Think  of 
the  speed  and  comfort  and  relative  cheapness  of 
the  Orient  Express;  of  the  way  you  could  wander, 
unruined,  through  long  aesthetic  holidays  in  Italy 
and  semi-aesthetic,  semi-athletic  holidays  in  the 
Alps;  of  the  week-end  accessibility  of  London 
from  Northern  England;  of  the  accessibility  of 
public  schools  for  the  sons  of  the  average  parson 
or  doctor;  of  the  penny  post,  crown  of  our  civi- 
lization— torn  from  us  while  the  abhorred  half- 
penny post  for  circulars  was  yet  left;  of  the  In- 
come Tax  just  large  enough  to  give  us  a  pleasant 
sense  of  grievance  patriotically  borne,  but  not  to 
prostrate  us,  winter  and  summer,  with  two  "  el- 
bow jolts  "  or  "  Mary  Ann  punches  "  like  those  of 
the  perfected  modern  prize-fighter. 

Many  sanguine  well-to-do  people  dreamt,  in  the 
267 


DISENCHANTMENT 

August  of  19 14,  that  the  war,  besides  attaining 
its  primary  purpose  of  beating  the  enemy,  would 
disarrange  none  of  these  blessings;  that  it  would 
even  have  as  a  by-product  a  kind  of  "  old-time 
Merrle  England,"  with  the  working  classes  cured 
of  the  thirst  for  wages  and  deeply  convinced  that 
everyone  who  was  not  one  of  themselves  was  a 
natural  ruler  over  them.  For  any  little  expense  to 
which  the  war  might  put  us  the  Germans  would 
pay,  and  our  troops  would  return  home  to  dismiss 
all  trade-union  officials  and  to  regard  the  upper 
and  middle  classes  thenceforth  as  a  race  of  heaven^ 
sent  colonels — men  to  be  followed,  feared,  and 
loved.  Ah,  happy  vision,  beautiful  dream! — like 
Thackeray's  reverie  about  having  a  very  old  and 
rich  aunt.  The  dreamer  awakes  among  the  snows 
of  the  Mont  Cenis  with  a  horrid  smell  in  the  cor- 
ridor and  the  hot-water  pipes  out  of  order.  And 
so  war  has  gone  out  of  fashion,  even  among 
cheery  well-to-do-people. 

II 

But  may  it  not  come  into  fashion  again?  Do 
not  all  the  great  fashions  move  in  cycles,  like 
stars?  When  our  wars  with  Napoleon  were  just 
over,  and  all  the  bills  still  to  be  paid,  and  the 
number  of  visibly  one-legged  men  at  its  provisional 

268 


FAIR    WARNING 

maximum,  must  not  many  simple  minds  have 
thought  that  surely  man  would  never  idealize  any 
business  so  beastly  and  costly  again?  And  then 
see  what  happened.  We  were  all  tranquilly  feed- 
ing, good  as  gold,  in  the  deep  and  pleasant  mead- 
ows of  the  long  Victorian  peace  when  from  some 
of  the  frailest  animals  in  the  pasture  there  rose 
a  plaintive  bleat  for  war.  It  was  the  very  lambs 
that  began  it.  "  Shall  we  never  have  carnage?  " 
Stevenson,  the  consumptive,  sighed  to  a  friend. 
Henley,  the  cripple,  wrote  a  longing  "  Song  of  the 
Sword."  Out  of  the  weak  came  forth  violence. 
Bookish  men  began  to  hug  the  belief  that  they  had 
lost  their  way  in  life;  they  felt  that  they  were 
Neys  or  Nelsons  manques,  or  cavalry  leaders  lost 
to  the  world.  "  If  I  had  been  born  a  corsair  or  a 
pirate,"  thought  Mr.  Tappertit,  musing  among 
the  ninepins,  "I  should  have  been  all  right." 
Fragile  dons  became  connoisseurs,  faute  de 
mieux,  of  prize-fighting;  they  talked,  nineteen  to 
the  dozen,  about  the  still,  strong  man  and 
"  straight-flung  words  and  few,"  adored  "  naked 
force,"  averred  they  were  not  cotton-spinners  all, 
and  deplored  the  cankers  of  a  quiet  world  and  a 
long  peace.  Some  of  them  entered  quite  hotly,  if 
not  always  expertly,  into  the  joys  and  sorrows  of 
what  they  called  "  Tommies,"  and  chafed  at  the 

269 


DISENCHANTMENT 

many  rumoured  refusals  of  British  innkeepers  to 
serve  them,  little  knowing  that  only  by  these  great 
acts  of  renunciation  on  the  part  of  licensees  has 
many  a  gallant  private  been  saved  from  falling 
into  that  morgue  an  "  officer  house,"  and  having 
his  beer  congealed  in  the  glass  by  the  refrigera- 
tive  company  of  colonels. 

The  father  and  mother  of  this  virilistic  move- 
ment among  the  well-read  were  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang,  the  most  donnish  of  wits,  and  one  of  the 
wittiest.  Lang  would  review  a  new  book  in  a 
great  many  places  at  once.  So,  when  he  blessed, 
his  blessing  would  carry  as  far  as  the  more  wholly 
literal  myrrh  and  frankincense  wafted  abroad  by 
the  hundred  hands  of  Messrs.  Boot.  The  fame 
of  Mr.  Rider  Haggard  was  one  of  Lang's  major 
products.  Mr.  Haggard  was  really  a  man  of  some 
mettle.  By  persons  fitted  to  judge  he  was  be- 
lieved to  have  at  his  fingers'  ends  all  the  best  of 
what  is  known  and  thought  by  mankind  about  tur- 
nips and  other  crops  with  which  they  may  honour- 
ably and  usefully  rotate.  But  it  was  for  turning 
his  back  upon  these  humdrum  sustainers  of  life 
and  writing,  in  a  rich  Corinthian  style,  accounts 
of  fancy  "  slaughters  grim  and  great,"  that  his 
flame  lived  and  spread  aloft,  as  Milton  says,  in  the 
pure  eyes  and  perfect  witness  of  Lang.     Another 

270 


FAIR    WARNING 

nursling  of  Lang's  was  the  wittier  Kipling,  then 
a  studious  youth  exuding  Border  ballads  and  Bret 
Harte  from  every  pore,  but  certified  to  carry 
about  him,  on  paper,  the  proper  smell  of  blood 
and  tobacco. 

Deep  answered  unto  deep.  In  Germany,  too, 
the  pibrochs  of  the  professors  were  rending  the 
skies,  and  poets  of  C4  medical  grade  were  tearing 
the  mask  from  the  hideous  face  of  peace.  The 
din  throughout  the  bookish  parts  of  Central  and 
Western  Europe  suggested  to  an  irreverent  mind 
a  stage  with  a  quaint  figure  of  some  short-sighted 
pedagogue  of  tradition  coming  upon  it,  round- 
shouldered,  curly-toed,  print-fed,  physically  inept, 
to  play  the  part  of  the  war-horse  in  Job,  swallow- 
ing the  ground  with  fierceness  and  rage,  and  "  say- 
ing among  the  trumpets  '  Ha,  ha!  '  "  You  may 
see  it  all  as  a  joke.  Or  as  something  rather  more 
than  a  joke,  in  its  effects.  Mr.  Yeats  suggested 
that  an  all-seeing  eye  might  perceive  the  Trojan 
War  to  have  come  because  of  a  tune  that  a  boy 
had  once  piped  in  Thessaly.  What  if  all  our  mil- 
lions of  men  had  to  be  killed  because  some  aca- 
demic Struwwelpeter,  fifty  years  since,  took  on 
himself  to  pipe  up  "  Take  the  nasty  peace  away !  " 
and  kick  the  shins  of  Concord,  his  most  kindly 
nurse? 

271 


DISENCHANTMENT 
III 

If  he  did,  it  was  natural.  All  Struwwelpeters 
are  natural.  All  heirs-apparent  are  said  to  take 
the  opposite  side  to  their  fathers  still  on  the 
throne.  And  those  learned  men  were  heirs  to  the 
age  of  the  Crystal  Palace,  the  age  of  the  first 
"  Locksley  Hall,"  with  its  "  parliament  of  man  " 
and  "  federation  of  the  world,"  the  age  that  laid 
a  railway  line  along  the  city  moat  of  Amiens  and 
opened  capacious  Hotels  de  la  Paix  throughout 
Latin  Europe,  the  age  when  passports  withered 
and  Baedeker  was  more  and  more,  the  age  that  in 
one  of  its  supreme  moments  of  ecstasy  founded  the 
London  International  College,  an  English  public 
school  (now  naturally  dead)  in  which  the  boys 
were  to  pass  some  of  their  terms  among  the 
heathen  in  Germany  or  France. 

The  cause  of  peace,  like  all  triumphant  causes, 
good  as  they  may  be,  had  made  many  second-rate 
friends.  It  had  become  safe,  and  even  sound,  for 
the  worldly  to  follow.  The  dullards,  the  people 
who  live  by  phrases  alone,  the  scribes  who  write 
by  rote  and  not  with  authority — most  of  these  had 
drifted  into  its  service.  It  had  become  a  provoca- 
tion, a  challenge,  vexing  those  "  discoursing  wits  " 
who  "  count  it,"  Bacon  says,  "  a  bondage  to  fix  a 

272 


FAIR    WARNING 

belief."  A  rebound  had  to  come.  And  those 
arch-rebounders  were  men  of  the  teaching  and 
writing  trades,  wherein  the  newest  fashions  in 
thought  are  most  eagerly  canvassed,  and  any  in- 
veterate acquiescence  in  mere  common  sense  af- 
flicts many  bosoms  with  the  fear  of  lagging  yards 
and  yards  behind  the  foremost  files  of  time;  per- 
haps— that  keenest  agony — of  having  nothing  pi- 
quant or  startling  to  say,  no  little  bombs  handy  for 
conversational  purposes.  "  I  sat  down,"  the  de- 
serving young  author  says  in  The  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field, "  and,  finding  that  the  best  things  remained 
to  be  said  on  the  wrong  side,  I  resolved  to  write 
a  book  that  should  be  wholly  new.  I  therefore 
dressed  up  three  paradoxes  with  some  ingenuity. 
They  were  false,  indeed,  but  they  were  new.  The 
jewels  of  truth  have  been  so  often  imported  by 
others  that  nothing  was  left  for  me  to  import  but 
some  splendid  things  that,  at  a  distance,  looked 
every  bit  as  well."  "  Peace  on  earth,  good-will 
towards  men,"  "  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers  " — 
these  and  the  like  might  be  jewels;  but  they  were 
demoded;  they  were  old  tags;  they  were  cliches 
of  bourgeois  morality;  they  were  vieux  jeu,  like 
the  garnets  with  which,  in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer, 
the  young  woman  of  fashion  declined  to  be  paci- 
fied when  her  heart  cried  out  for  the  diamonds. 

273 


DISENCHANTMENT 

IV 

Then  the  Church  itself  must  needs  take  a  hand 
— or  that  part  of  the  Church  which  ever  coclcs  an 
eye  at  the  latest  fashions  in  public  opinion,  the 
"  blessed  fellows,"  like  Poins,  that  "  think  as 
every  man  thinks  "  and  help  to  swell  every  pass- 
ing shout  into  a  roar.  I  find  among  old  papers 
a  letter  written  in  Queen  Victoria's  reign  by  an 
unfashionable  curmudgeon  whose  thought  would 
not  keep  to  the  roadway  like  theirs.  "  I  see,"  this 
rude  ironist  writes,  "  that  '  the  Church's  duty  in 
regard  to  war  '  is  to  be  discussed  at  the  Church 
Congress.  That  is  right.  For  a  year  the  heads 
of  our  Church  have  been  telling  us  what  war  is 
and  does — that  it  is  a  school  of  character,  that  it 
sobers  men,  cleans  them,  strengthens  them,  knits 
their  hearts,  makes  them  brave,  patient,  humble, 
tender,  prone  to  self-sacrifice.  Watered  by  '  war's 
red  rain,'  one  bishop  tells  us,  virtue  grows;  a 
cannonade,  he  points  out,  is  an  '  oratorio  ' — al- 
most a  form  of  worship.  True;  and  to  the 
Church  men  look  for  help  to  save  their  souls  from 
starving  for  lack  of  this  good  school,  this  kindly 
rain,  this  sacred  music.  Congresses  are  apt  to 
lose  themselves  in  wastes  of  words.  This  one 
must  not — surely  cannot — so  straight  is  the  way 

274 


FAIR    WARNING 

to  the  goal.  It  has  simply  to  draft  and  submit 
a  new  Collect  for  '  war  in  our  time,'  and  to  call 
for  the  reverent  but  firm  emendation,  in  the  spirit 
of  the  best  modern  thought,  of  those  passages  in 
Bible  and  Prayer-book  by  which  even  the  truest 
of  Christians  and  the  best  of  men  have  at  times 
been  blinded  to  the  duty  of  seeking  war  and  en- 
suing it. 

"Still,  man's  moral  nature  cannot,  I  admit,  live 
by  war  alone.  Nor  do  I  say,  with  some,  that  peace 
is  wholly  bad.  Even  amid  the  horrors  of  peace 
you  will  find  little  shoots  of  character  fed  by  the 
gentle  and  timely  rains  of  plague  and  famine,  tem- 
pest and  fire;  simple  lessons  of  patience  and  cour- 
age conned  in  the  schools  of  typhus,  gout,  and 
stone;  not  oratorios,  perhaps,  but  homely  an- 
thems and  rude  hymns  played  on  knife  and  gun,  in 
the  long  winter  nights.  Far  from  me  to  '  sin  our 
mercies  '  or  to  call  mere  twilight  dark.  Yet  dark 
it  may  become.  For  remember  that  even  these 
poor  makeshift  schools  of  character,  these  second- 
bests,  these  halting  substitutes  for  war — remem- 
ber that  the  efficiency  of  every  one  of  them,  be  it 
hunger,  accident,  ignorance,  sickness  or  pain,  is 
menaced  by  the  intolerable  strain  of  its  struggle 
with  secular  doctors,  plumbers,  inventors,  school- 

275 


DISENCHANTMENT 

masters,  and  policemen.  Every  year  thousands 
who  would  in  nobler  days  have  been  braced  and 
steeled  by  manly  tussles  with  smallpox  or  diph- 
theria are  robbed  of  that  blessing  by  the  great 
changes  made  in  our  drains.  Every  year  thou- 
sands of  women  and  children  must  go  their  way 
bereft  of  the  rich  spiritual  experience  of  the  widow 
and  the  orphan.  I  try  not  to  despond,  but  when 
I  think  of  all  that  Latimer  owed  to  the  fire,  Regu- 
lus  to  a  spiked  barrel,  Socrates  to  prison,  and  Job 
to  destitution  and  disease — when  I  think  of  these 
things  and  then  think  of  how  many  of  my  poor 
fellow  creatures  in  our  modern  world  are  robbed 
daily  of  the  priceless  discipline  of  danger,  want, 
and  torture,  then  I  ask  myself — I  cannot  help  ask- 
ing myself — whether  we  are  not  walking  into  a 
very  slough  of  moral  and  spiritual  squalor. 

"Once  more,  I  am  no  alarmist.  As  long  as  we 
have  wars  to  stay  our  souls  upon,  the  moral  evil 
will  not  be  grave;  and,  to  do  the  Ministry  jus- 
tice, I  see  no  risk  of  their  drifting  into  any  long 
or  serious  peace.  But  weak  or  vicious  men  may 
come  after  them,  and  it  is  now,  in  the  time  of 
our  strength,  of  quickened  insight  and  deepened 
devotion,  that  we  must  take  thought  for  the  leaner 
years  when  there  may  be  no  killing  of  multiudes 

276 


FAIR    WARNING 

of  Englishmen,  no  breaking  up  of  English  homes, 
no  chastening  blows  to  English  trade,  no  making, 
by  thousands,  of  English  widows,  orphans,  and 
cripples — when  the  school  may  be  shut  and  the 
rain  a  drought  and  the  oratorio  dumb." 

But  what  did  a  few  unfashionable  curmudgeons 
count  for,  against  so  many  gifted  divines? 

V 

And  yet  all  mortal  things  are  subject  to  decay, 
even  reactions,  even  decay  itself,  and  there  comes 
a  time  when  the  dead  Ophelia  may  justly  be  said 
to  be  not  decomposing,  but  recomposing  success- 
fully as  violets  and  so  forth.  Heirs-apparent 
grow  up  into  kings  and  have  little  heirs  of  their 
own  who,  hearkening  to  nature's  benevolent  law, 
become  stout  counter-reactionists  in  their  turn.  So 
now  the  pre-war  virilists,  the  literary  braves  who 
felt  that  they  had  supped  too  full  of  peace,  have 
died  in  their  beds,  or  lost  voice,  like  the  cuckoos 
in  June,  and  a  different  breed  find  voice  and  pipe 
up.  These  are  the  kind,  the  numerous  kind,  whose 
youth  has  supped  quite  full  enough  of  war.  For 
them  Bellona  has  not  the  mystical  charm,  as  of 
grapes  out  of  reach,  that  she  had  for  the  Henleys 
and  Stevensons.     All  the  veiled-mistress  business 

277 


DISENCHANTMENT 

is  off.  Battles  have  no  aureoles  now  in  the  sight 
of  young  men  as  they  had  for  the  British  prelate 
who  wrote  that  old  poem  about  the  "  red  rain." 
The  men  of  the  counter-reaction  have  gone  to  the 
school  and  sat  the  oratorio  out  and  taken  a  course 
of  the  waters,  after  the  worthy  prelate's  prescrip- 
tion. They  have  seen  trenches  full  of  gassed  men, 
and  the  queue  of  their  friends  at  the  brothel-door 
in  Bethune.  At  the  heart  of  the  magical  rose  was 
seated  an  earwig. 

Presently  all  the  complaisant  part  of  our  Press 
may  jump  to  the  fact  that  the  game  of  idealizing 
war  is  now,  in  its  turn,  a  back  number.  Then  we 
may  hear  such  a  thudding  or  patter  of  feet  as  Car- 
lyle  describes  when  Louis  XV  was  seen  to  be  dead 
and  the  Court  bolted  off,  ventre  a  terre,  along  the 
corridors  of  Versailles,  to  kiss  the  hand  of  Louis 
XVL  And  then  will  come  the  season  of  danger. 
Woe  unto  Peace,  or  anyone  else,  when  all  men 
speak  well  of  her,  even  the  base.  When  Lord 
Robert  Cecil  and  Mr.  Clynes  and  Sir  Hubert 
Gough  stand  up  for  the  peace  which  ex-soldiers 
desire,  it  is  all  right.  But  what  if  Tadpoe  and 
Taper  stood  up  for  it?  What  if  all  the  vendors 
of  supposedly  popular  stuff,  all  the  timid  gregari- 
ous repeaters  of  current  banalities,  all  the  largest 
circulations  in  the  solar  system  were  on  the  side 

278 


FAIR    WARNING 

of  peace,  as  well  as  her  old  bodyguard  of  game 
disregarders  of  fashion  and  whimsical  stickers-up 
for  Christianity,  chivalry,  or  sportsmanship? 

We  must  remember  that,  in  the  course  of  na- 
ture, the  proportion  of  former  combatants  among 
us  must  steadily  decline.  And  war  hath  no  fury 
like  a  non-combatant.  Can  you  not  already  fore- 
hear,  in  the  far  distance,  beyond  the  peace  period 
now  likely  to  come,  the  still,  small  voice  of  some 
Henley  or  Lang  of  later  days  beginning  to  pipe 
up  again  with  Ancient  Pistol's  ancient  suggestion : 
"What?  Shall  we  have  incision?  Shall  we  im- 
brue? "  And  then  a  sudden  furore,  a  war-dance, 
a  beating  of  tom-toms.  And  so  the  whole  cycle 
revolving  again.  "  Seest  thou  not,  I  say,  what  a 
deformed  thief  this  fashion  is?  How  giddily  a' 
turns  about  all  the  hot  bloods  between  fourteen 
and  five-and-thirty  ?  Sometimes  fashioning  them 
like  Pharaoh's  soldiers  in  the  reechy  painting, 
sometimes  like  god  Bel's  priests  in  the  old  church 
window;  sometimes  like  the  shaven  Hercules  in  the 
smirched  worm-eaten  tapestry?  "  Anything  to  be 
in  the  fashion. 

There  is  only  one  thing  for  it.  There  must  still 
be  five  or  six  million  ex-soldiers.  They  are  the 
most  determined  peace  party  that  ever  existed  in 
Britain.    Let  them  clap  the  only  darbies  they  have 

279 


DISENCHANTMENT 

— the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations — on  to 
the  wrists  of  all  future  poets,  romancers,  and 
sages.  The  future  is  said  to  be  only  the  past  en- 
tered by  another  door.  We  must  beware  in  good 
time  of  those  boys,  and  fiery  elderly  men,  piping 
in  Thessaly. 


THE    END 


280 


''^^^^^^^^ 


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'lilllMMliilnlim  '^'  '•^'^'^'^^  LlfiHARY  FACILITY 


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